Posted by Rosie Jennings on May 14th, 2025.
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Four-day course (in-person):
University of Kent, Canterbury (with some late evenings)
Cost: £650 per person / £500 concession (for practicing artists, students, and those with a low income)
Accommodation: On-campus accommodation is available at an additional cost
Monday 7–Thursday 10 July, 10:00–17:00 BST
Four-week course (online):
All lectures, workshops, and discussions will take place online
£550 per person / £400 concession
Wednesdays 11 June–2 July, 19:00–21:30 BST and Saturday 28 June, 14:00–17:00 BST
Bookings are now open for this year’s Birth Rites Collection Summer School.
The Summer School is a unique programme of lectures, workshops, seminars and one-to-one tutorials around the Birth Rites Collection, the world’s first and only contemporary art collection dedicated to the subject of childbirth.
This intensive programme 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, with guest lectures from leading artists in the field.
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, who are 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, filmic and/or performative material, to be used thereafter in your own future work.
Workshops include exploring the 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.
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
Speakers include: Griselda Pollock (online keynote), Anna Perach, Hannah Conway, Courtney Conrad, Catherine Williamson, Andrea Khora, Helen Knowles and Leni Dothan, with more to be announced soon.
We offer two modalities for this course: one in person, as an intensive four-day program at the University of Kent, and one weekly online course over four weeks, that participants can join from anywhere in the world.
A £100 deposit is required to secure a place for either course.
