Overcoming the Cultural Barriers to Breastfeeding
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.
The Bradford Podcast amplifies mothers’ diverse voices on breastfeeding, adoption, milk donation, birth trauma, and cultural traditions—part of Holding Time’s wider Creative Health programme in Bradford.
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.
Unveiling: 12-3pm Friday November 15th, 1.00PM Bowling Park Wild area, Bradford I am always looking for ways to reach more … More
Stones is a five-minute film by Lisa Creagh reflecting on 25 years of living with endometriosis and severe menstrual pain. Created as the first of a two-part work, the film uses personal memory to explore chronic illness, treatment, menopause and resilience. It was made in collaboration with Creagh’s daughter and acknowledges the pioneering surgery that made motherhood possible.
I’m Rachel New, a broadcaster, writer and workshop facilitator. I’ve been running creative and therapeutic writing workshops for breastfeeding mothers, … More
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.
Holding Time moves into the new Family Hub Network in Halton with creative writing workshops, portraits across seven venues and an audio tour around the beautiful walled garden at Norton Priory
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.
Gathering together key conversations from the Holding Time project about motherhood, breastfeeding, history, culture, support and more…!
Women are constantly faced with this difficult choice. And it is often a woman’s choice whether they want to carry on with their career and keep climbing the ladder and earning more and getting what they deserve, or whether they want to prioritise their children. There’s just this constant juggle of yourself over your child. I feel like I do prioritise myself a lot. I’ve been very selfish in many ways to continue with this work. The unselfish thing perhaps, would have been to go and get a job.
Breastfeeding has profound and long-lasting health advantages, but the risks of poor maternal well-being run just as deep. The “breast is best” message has, in many cases, done more harm than good for both breastfeeding and formula feeding women. Words carry a lot of power and we need to be very careful of their use in future breastfeeding promotion campaigns.
For many, the current WHO recommendation of six months of exclusive breastfeeding is simply not realistic and can discourage mothers from even initiating breastfeeding. Instead we should follow a woman-centred approach where mothers are empowered to set their own realistic targets.
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.
The arguments for breastfeeding in terms of health are already won, but breastfeeding statistics remain impossibly low in the UK. How can this be? Because the barriers to breastfeeding are cultural, not medical but the majority of information about breastfeeding comes from the medical community. This viewpoint says that women should breastfeed, without acknowledging the personal and emotional struggles involved in doing so.
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.
