The Birth Project

The Birth Project is led by Professor Susan Hogan Births can be joyful and shocking for all involved: primarily for women, but also for birth partners, obstetricians and midwives, who are subject to very different stresses. Furthermore, hospital protocols, coupled with the unpredictability of birthing itself, can override what women want and expect in terms of a birth experience, leaving some women distressed and others frankly traumatised; this can have a knock-on effect on their infant’s development. Furthermore, midwifery and obstetric practices, within a demanding period for the NHS of austerity, litigation fears and pressure from the media, can have an impact on the kinds of stress experienced by birth professionals.

In The Birth Project, the arts are being used to interrogate this complex topic. Midwives, and new mothers are being given the opportunity to explore their experiences of compassion fatigue, stress, birth suffering and post-natal readjustments using different art forms: phototherapy, photo-diaries and art elicitation. These groups will then join together in ‘mutual recovery’ events in which diverse perspectives will be shared, primarily through elucidation of the art works produced. A midwives group comprising professional doulas, as well as a birth partners, whose experience is often overlooked, will use the arts to explore their experiences, and then join the ‘mutual recovery’ exchanges.

The group work and the events are being captured using documentary filmmaking. The raison d’etre of this project is to create dialogue between different communities of interest and experience, to use the arts to interrogate discourses, to challenge embedded assumptions, and in this process, to stimulate mutual recovery between all those who experience and are affected by birth. We situate this endeavour in the context of an emerging practice of health humanities (Crawford et al. 2014), art as social action (Levine & Levine 2014) and visual research methodologies (Pink 2012).

Further information can be found within the Birth Project website.

Project Start Date: Tuesday 27th May 2014 Project End Date: Tuesday 27th May 2014

Get in touch with the research assistant, Dr Paula McCloskey, if you're interested in finding out more: p.mccloskey@derby.ac.uk