{"id":834,"date":"2024-08-21T14:43:58","date_gmt":"2024-08-21T13:43:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/kei-case-studies\/?p=834"},"modified":"2025-04-01T09:23:30","modified_gmt":"2025-04-01T08:23:30","slug":"exploring-mothers-experiences-of-non-consensual-adoption-through-artists-books","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/kei-case-studies\/2024\/08\/21\/exploring-mothers-experiences-of-non-consensual-adoption-through-artists-books\/","title":{"rendered":"Exploring mothers’ experiences of non-consensual adoption through artists’ books"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dr Stella Bolaki<\/a> (School of Humanities) and Dr Samantha Davey<\/a> (Essex Law School) have worked together to conduct interdisciplinary research on how creative methods could help mothers whose children have been adopted without their consent to process difficult feelings such as grief and loss. Whether affected by historic practices of adoption or contemporary care and adoption proceedings, mothers\u2019 voices are largely missing from the field of adoption studies, and media coverage is often unsympathetic and even stigmatising.<\/p>\n

To remedy this, Stella and Samantha have organised artist\u2019s book workshops where mothers are shown how to craft a personal, visual and tactile book out of a variety of artistic materials, and use it as a tool of self-reflection, healing and empowerment. Similar workshops have been offered to social workers, barristers and counsellors to enrich the practice and build the capacity of different professionals working in this area. In Autumn 2024, the outputs from these workshops were exhibited at an art gallery based on the high street in Colchester as part of the exhibition ‘Expressions of Trauma’<\/a>. The artists\u2019 books featured are a powerful reflection of each of mothers\u2019 experiences. Each page contains raw emotions and displays feelings of love, grief, sadness, anger, frustration and, ultimately, resilience. Through art, these mothers have found a way to express pain and connect with others facing similar struggles. This powerful element of storytelling through art is what made the \u2018Expressions of Trauma\u2019 exhibition not just an art display but a shared space for dialogue between mothers, professionals and the wider public \u2013 as well as a space for reflection, healing and social justice.<\/p>\n

The ‘Expressions of Trauma’ exhibition is now on display at the Jaywick Martello Tower in Clacton-on-Sea<\/a>, open weekends from 10am-4pm until 26th January 2025.<\/p>\n

The team is developing a series of training videos and creative resources to support mothers emotionally and is collaborating with Movement for an Adoption Apology<\/a>\u00a0and Pause<\/a>\u00a0to\u00a0raise broader public awareness of the challenges these mothers face. To find out more about this research, watch this video, <\/a>read this open access article<\/a> or visit the Mothers After Adoption website.<\/a><\/p>\n

\"An
One of the scrapbooks created through the project.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

This project is funded by Kent’s Impact Acceleration Account (IAA) scheme<\/a>. IAAs are institutional awards that have been introduced by Research Councils within UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) to deliver funding mechanisms for knowledge exchange and impact activities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dr Stella Bolaki (School of Humanities) and Dr Samantha Davey (Essex Law School) have worked together to conduct interdisciplinary research on how creative methods could … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":74795,"featured_media":869,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[275618],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/kei-case-studies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/834"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/kei-case-studies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/kei-case-studies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/kei-case-studies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/74795"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/kei-case-studies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=834"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/kei-case-studies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/834\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":883,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/kei-case-studies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/834\/revisions\/883"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/kei-case-studies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/869"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/kei-case-studies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/kei-case-studies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/kei-case-studies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}