Re-Emerge at Artwalk, Wakefield, July 2022

by Isla MacRae, Lauren Brennan, Jessica Bradley, Diane Saxon and Rebecca Thomas

In this blog post, researchers and practitioners involved in The Art House Wakefield’s Re-Emerge arts and health programme reflect on the public exhibition which took place on 27 July 2022 as part of Wakefield’s bi-monthly ArtWalk.

Re-Emerge has been running since January 2022, and includes multiple strands of creative workshops and activities for different groups of people, including new and expectant mothers. We wanted the exhibition to be an opportunity for people to engage with the artworks that had been created over the first seven months of the project and think about their own experiences of re-emergence after the challenges and disruption of the COVID19 pandemic. Our questions for the exhibition and its development centred on what it means to come together, after a period of isolation, and the power and possibilities of creative practice — including journaling, print-making, photography and sculpture.

Images of Maternal Journal group artworks created for the exhibition. The images show canvases by participants which visualise and represent their experiences of motherhood and creative journaling

ArtWalk Wakefield is a bi-monthly event which showcases Wakefield’s vibrant arts and creative sector, giving creative practitioners the opportunity to exhibit their work to different audiences, including fellow artists and the general public. We worked closely with a group of women who had participated in the Maternal Journal workshops earlier in the year, delivered as part of the Re-Emerge programme. The women created artworks and co-curated the exhibition and accompanying zine, working with the Re-Emerge project team and visual artist Louise Atkinson. One of the Mindful Art workshop participants also co-curated the exhibition, and offered her reflections on this experience:

I was also given the opportunity to be involved in planning for the exhibition to showcase what the Re-Emerge programme was about and had achieved. It filled me with such joy to be a part of that, to help set up and see all the amazing work that had been created by the other groups. It was an incredibly heart-warming experience and being able to stand and talk with people as they came round to view was a huge achievement for me. The whole thing start to finish has helped bring me back to life somehow, brought me back to myself. I cannot thank the team at The Art House and WASP (Wakefield Awareness Support Project) enough for the experience I have been gifted.

As part of the exhibition curation process we co-created a zine, showing some of the images created by Maternal Journal participants and thoughts and reflections about their experiences of journaling and motherhood. We also created a leaflet which included some of the artworks from other strands of the project, including Creative Age and Mindful Art workshops with parents.

Almost 200 people attended the exhibition over the course of the ArtWalk evening, with many contributing their own thoughts and ideas of what it means to ‘re-emerge’ from the COVID19 pandemic, including through a shared collage activity. Programme Manager Diane Saxon shared her reflections on the exhibition:

It was so gratifying to see the work from across the different strands of the programme altogether on display; to be able to really take in the beautiful art, and appreciate the positive impact on participants.

Camera-less photography prints created by participants in Re-Emerge, displayed for ArtWalk.

Reflections on co-curating the exhibition

Social Research Interns Isla and Lauren now reflect on their own experience of being involved with the project.

Since May, Lauren and Isla have been working as social research interns alongside Jessica on Re-Emerge, the aim of which has been to explore the possibilities and affordances of creative practice for people who have been isolated as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. Specifically, Lauren and Isla were involved in researching and evaluating the impacts of social and creative interventions for new mothers and pregnant women, through a series of workshops called Maternal Journal. These sessions were led by a community midwife, Rebecca, and involved various weekly arts-based activities, including creative journaling, printmaking, ceramics, photography and painting. Mothers, and in particular new mothers, experienced significant isolation during COVID19 lockdowns, with the communal support and spaces for meeting restricted and opportunities to be outside the home severely curtailed. The sessions were an opportunity for mothers to come together, explore their creativity in a supportive and welcoming environment, and express their thoughts, feelings and experiences of motherhood in a safe space. Lauren and Isla attended the sessions each week, writing reflections and observations after each workshop, and thinking about how the sessions made them feel.

Isla

I found it a particularly interesting and immersive experience, as we weren’t merely observing the sessions, but also directly participating in the activities, keeping our own creative journals that we added to each week. In the midst of the deadlines and stressors of being a Masters student, the weekly sessions provided a much needed sense of calm for me, and I found myself looking forward to the two hours each week where I could unwind and focus my mind on something other than essays!

At the end of July, we had the opportunity to collaboratively showcase some of the programme participants’ work at the Artwalk — a bi-monthly public exhibition held across Wakefield and organised by The Art House. We were able to offer extra weekly sessions for those who wanted to be involved in the Artwalk, in which we worked collaboratively in order to co-curate the exhibition, bringing together different aspects of the work we’d done and what the Maternal Journal workshops meant to those who participated. This involved the participants creating canvases, using techniques learnt in the sessions, and conveying their thoughts and feelings about the changes they’d experienced through the journey of motherhood. We also worked together with artist Louise Atkinson, who helped us to produce a wonderful zine and leaflet explaining what Maternal Journal is all about, and the amazing things which had come out of our sessions with Rebecca.

The exhibition night was a great culmination of all the work the participants had created over the weeks, and it was fantastic to be able to share this with participants’ friends and family, and other attendees who were simply interested in what was on display. As well as the art work on the walls, we facilitated a participatory collaging activity for attendees, an activity Rebecca had led as part of one of the Maternal Journal sessions. It was lovely to see both adults and children collaging together, strangers coming together, chatting and forging new connections whilst being creative. Many of those I spoke to whilst collaging remarked on how enjoyable and relaxing they found it, how important it is to carve out time for oneself amidst the pressures of a busy life. It was lovely to see the positive effects of the workshops in this new setting, and the ways in which the participants’ artwork had inspired others to reflect on their own feelings and experiences through similar methods.

Lauren

What I really liked about exhibiting at ArtWalk was that attendees, in albeit very brief conversations, picked up on similar themes to those that had been identified and discussed within the Maternal Journal sessions. For example, one ArtWalk attendee noted how valuable it is that mothers are given a space to say what is often ‘unsayable’ (Harvey et al., 2022) — the things you wish you could say about aspects of motherhood that you hate, but don’t dare to say for fear of being perceived as ungrateful or a mad mother.

The ArtWalk was an opportunity for the participants to bring their families along to see their artworks and what they had been creating. I was able to witness some of the children’s faces when they saw their mum’s artwork — some of which they’d been able to help with — and this was priceless.

Many of the exhibition attendees commented on how relaxing, and enjoyable, they found the collaging activity. I noticed that this was particularly common among adults who said that hadn’t sat and collaged, or done any creative activity, in a long time.

A note on authors and funding

Our blog post has been written by multiple authors. Isla MacRae and Lauren Brennan were working with programme research lead Jessica Bradley as project interns from May — July 2022, supporting the activities, developing the research and assisting with the exhibition. Diane Saxon is Arts and Health Programme Manager at The Art House and Rebecca Thomas is a perinatal mental health specialist midwife who has been leading Maternal Journal workshops as part of the project, working with a wider team of arts and health practitioners. While the project is funded by Leeds Hospitals Charity and NHS Charities Together, we were awarded additional funding from the University of Sheffield Faculty of Social Sciences for knowledge transfer and public engagement, and this enabled us to work with a small group of project participants who had been involved with the Maternal Journal programme to create work for the exhibition. The authors thank Tim Herrick for critical friend comments on an earlier draft.

Find out more:

Re-Emerge Arts and Health Programme: https://the-arthouse.org.uk/events/re-emerge/

ArtWalk Wakefield: https://artwalk.org.uk/event/re-emerge/

Maternal Journal at Re-Emerge: https://medium.com/soeresearch/re-emerge-reflecting-on-the-maternal-journal-training-workshop-9b2c25569d75

Maternal Journal: https://www.maternaljournal.org/

Follow Maternal Journal Wakefield on Instagram @Maternal_Journal_Wakefield

For more information about the research and evaluation of the programme contact Dr Jessica Bradley, School of Education, University of Sheffield: jessica.bradley@sheffield.ac.uk

For more information about the programme contact Diane Saxon, The Art House: diane@the-arthouse.org.uk