Birth Rites Collection Summer School
Location: The University of Kent, Canterbury Campus
7th to 10th July 2025
Birth Rites Collection’s Summer School is a unique programme of lectures, workshops, seminars and one-to-one tutorials. Four intensive days will introduce you to the collection and facilitate a dialogue between you, your practice and the artworks. The course is led by artist & BRC Curator Helen Knowles and artist Dr. Leni Dothan.
Birth Rites Collection Summer School 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 a bespoke multi-media pack of visual, textual, auditory, photographic, filmic and performative material, to be used thereafter in your own future work.
This year, workshops include reflecting on the themes of aesthetics, ethics, politics and the visual discourses of birth through visual and written materials with the emphasis on learning how to stage and document performances. Through lectures by leading artists in the field, we will introduce different perspectives to initiate in-depth discussions.
Summer School themes include:
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Navigating mortality from preterm birth to post-partum
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Artistic responses to preterm birth
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How the collection informs and unpacks different perspectives in midwifery, medicine and education, and its potential to improve practice and policy
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The Collection’s impact on feminist art practices and the rehabilitation of visual discourses of birth into art history
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Censorship of artworks on birth, institutional responses, ethics and the law
2025 speakers include: Griselda Pollock (online keynote), Anna Perach, Hannah Conway, Courtney Conrad, Catherine Williamson, Andrea Khora, Helen Knowles and Leni Dothan, with more announced soon.
4-day course – (in person)
4-day course (In-person) University of Kent Campus, Canterbury
7th – 10th July, 10 – 5pm (with some late evenings) Cost £650 per person / £500 concession (for practicing artists, students and those with a low-income).
15 places available, secured with a deposit of £100.
Online course
Wednesday evenings 19.00 – 21.30 (BST), 11th June – 2nd July 2025 & Saturday 28th June, 14.00 – 17.00 (BST)
£550 per person / £400 concession (for artists, students and those with a low-income)
Bookings are secured with a £100 deposit