Join the Conversation: BRC Autumn Programme 2025 – Applications Open

BRC Autumn Programme 2025 will introduce you to the collection and facilitate a dialogue between you, your practice, this year’s themes and the artworks. The course is led by artist and BRC Curator, Helen Knowles and artist Dr. Leni Dothan.

The course will empower you to articulate your own practice and responses to the collection in a supportive environment whilst exploring critical perspectives in the field of birth.

Midwives, academics, curators, artists, medics, health professionals, art historians, policy advisors and the general public interested in childbirth through the lens of art, are all welcome. As a participant, you will enter the course with your own skill set and finish, with bespoke visual, textual, auditory, photographic, filmic and/or performative material, to be used thereafter in your own future work.

Workshops include exploring the aesthetic, ethical, political and visual discourses of birth via text, film, and performance. Additionally, this year, we present a unique opportunity to engage with a curated selection of works from the collection that are not ordinarily accessible to the public. In a dedicated online space these pieces will enrich participants' engagement of the autumn programme’s themes.

Through lectures by leading artists in the field, we will introduce different perspectives to initiate in-depth discussions.

Themes include:

• Navigating mortality - from preterm birth to post-partum

• Artistic responses to preterm birth.

• How the collection informs and unpacks different perspectives in midwifery, medicine and education, and its potential to improve practice and policy.

• The Collection’s impact on feminist art practices and the rehabilitation of visual discourses of birth into art history.

• Censorship of artworks on birth, institutional responses, ethics and the law

2025 speakers include: Griselda Pollock (online keynote), Courtney Conrad, Andrea Khora, Helen Knowles and Leni Dothan, with more announced soon.

Four-Week Course (Online):Dates: Wednesdays, 7:00 PM – 9:30 PM BST November 19,26, December 3, 10.

& Saturday, Dec 6, 2:00 PM – 5:00 PM BST.

All lectures, workshops, and discussions will take place online.

Cost: 550GBP per person, 400GBP Concession Rate.

A 100GBP deposit is required to secure a place for the course. If you book through Eventbrite to secure your place by paying the deposit, we will follow up with an email for the next payment steps to avoid large transactions fees.

There is one bursary place available.

To book your place or for more information, visit the Summer School page on the Birth Rites Collection website: https://www.birthritescollection.org.uk/autumn-program

or email helen@birthrites.org.uk.