Art, Motherhood & Creative Health
The Bradford season of the Holding Time podcast brings together a diverse range of mothers’ stories about breastfeeding, adoption, pregnancy, free-birthing, donor milk, preterm babies and birth trauma. Co-created with mothers, local infant feeding teams and community partners, the series examines breastfeeding as part of the wider experience of motherhood and maternal wellbeing in Bradford.
The Holding Time Milk Line celebrates Bradford mothers through an immersive walking trail of art, poetry, and storytelling. Created by artist Lisa Creagh for Baby Week Bradford, the trail links Family Hubs and green spaces, inviting families to listen, reflect, and connect with local stories of motherhood, feeding, and wellbeing.
The Holding Timepiece is an evolving artwork by Lisa Creagh that challenges conventional ways of measuring time. Inspired by Cosmatesque geometry and developed through glass sculpture, photography and 3D animation, it visualises maternal time as something that grows rather than passes. Created over nearly a decade, the Timepiece is now central to Holding Time’s development of an immersive virtual reality intervention designed to support mothers experiencing neonatal intensive care.
I’ve come to realise why it was hard at times in my breastfeeding journey and a lot of this relating to being neurodivergent. As we see an increase in awareness around hidden disabilities, I hope other mums can feel confident to seek help if they’re finding it hard to breastfeed/parent a child with additional needs.
Mothers and families throughout Bradford shared their experience of breastfeeding as part of the Holding Time Project, launched with a live event during Baby Week Bradford on the 14th November 2024.
Ablaze in Bradford explores the ideas, collaborations and creative development behind the Holding Time Project’s ambitious Bradford programme. Artist Lisa Creagh describes how an encounter with prehistoric maternal figurines in Malta inspired the monumental Holding Time Chair, a stone sculpture connecting public art with mothers’ recorded stories. Combining photographic portraits, creative writing, exhibitions and outdoor audio trails, the project brings breastfeeding and maternal wellbeing into Bradford’s parks, hospitals and communities.
The Holding Time Project brought photography, poetry and creative health workshops to Halton Family Hubs across Runcorn and Widnes. Featuring breastfeeding portraits across seven venues, writing workshops led by Rachel New and an audio tour at Norton Priory’s walled garden, the programme created opportunities for mothers to share their experiences of breastfeeding and motherhood. Developed with Halton Family Hubs and Improving Me, the project celebrates mothers’ voices and explores how creative practice can support maternal wellbeing.
Singing Mamas joined with the Holding Time Project Manchester mothers to create a warm afternoon of storytelling and chorus for the end of the writing workshops at Manchester Art Gallery.
Motherspeak brought the voices of Bradford mothers to Kala Sangam Arts Centre through a moving live performance of poetry and personal stories. Developed through creative writing workshops led by Rachel New as part of the Holding Time Project, the event explored breastfeeding, birth trauma and maternal wellbeing. Through storytelling, mothers transformed deeply personal experiences into powerful expressions of resilience, connection and shared understanding.
In 2018, Holding Time partnered with ONCA Gallery in Brighton to test the idea of a Breastfeeding Hub—a welcoming space for mothers’ voices, interviews, and conversations about the cultural and structural barriers to breastfeeding.
