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 a long-term artwork by Lisa Creagh exploring maternal time as something that grows rather than simply passes. Developed from Cosmatesque geometry, glass, photography, 2D and 3D animation, the Timepiece has evolved into the centrepiece of a planned VR Creative Health intervention for mothers with babies in 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.
The Royal Society for Public Health announced the winners of its 2024 Health & Wellbeing Awards, with the National Arts in Hospitals Network’s Our National Health Stories winning the Arts and Health category. Holding Time formed part of this national programme, bringing maternal stories and breastfeeding experiences into NHS settings through photography, film and creative health practice.
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.
Bradford will host a range of exciting Creative Health events as part of the Holding Time project, aimed at raising breastfeeding awareness ahead of City of Culture 2025.
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.
The Holding Time Project launched in Cheshire and Merseyside at Liverpool’s Open Eye Gallery on 19 November 2021, as part of Baby Week. Supported by WHAM, the NHS Cheshire and Merseyside Women’s and Children’s Partnership, the event brought together photography, mothers’ interviews, poetry and creative health research. Led by artist Lisa Creagh, Holding Time explored the cultural, emotional and practical barriers to breastfeeding while celebrating the diversity of mothers’ experiences across the region.
In this Holding Time article, postnatal lead midwife Angelina Steinegger reflects on bonding and attachment in the first hours, weeks and months of a baby’s life. She explores the importance of holding, talking, singing, massage, skin-to-skin contact and responsive caregiving, while reassuring parents that bonding is a gradual process rather than something that must happen immediately after birth.
I spoke about my project and the aims of partnering with the CTU for Coventry City of Culture. I showed the animated portraits, as well as a slideshow of stills. it was the first time I had presented the work in a meidcal setting and I found the atmosphere invigorating. It gave me new insight into how clinical trials lead the way to greater understanding of new approaches.
For this event I put together a slideshow, beginning with the story of my own struggles to breastfeed, then the rationale for the Holding Time still images, how these lead to the animation and installation. Finally I talked about the project website, the breastfeeding Hubs, the YouTube Channel interviews.
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.
