The Women’s Art Activation System (WAAS) has been working on the project The Baby Makers: Making History throughout 2024.
Working in partnership with Museum in the Park, Stroud, over 2 years, the project is supported by the National Lottery Heritage Fund.
The Baby Makers: Making History set out to establish reproductive and birth histories in the Museum collection as a little-recorded but important part of our collective heritage.
Working with key partners Stroud Against Racism, and Stroud Local History Societies, we have uncovered diverse memories and experiences to do with the maternity services, fostering and adoption, loss, and birth-related stories across the District.
Collaborating with Stroud Against Racism we explored Black and diverse histories of birth and maternity, culminating in a new display in the Museum foyer. Launched for Black History Month with most of the input from particpant Dee Guthrie, the display has been attracting many very positive comments and responses.
Another focus is on stories from before the 1980’s and going back as far as memory will allow. Working with Stroud Local History Societies we have been finding out what giving birth was like in Stroud over the decades and how practices and meanings have changed over time.
Thanks to National Lottery players we have collected new material for the Museum in the Park archives.
We have made a documentary film and a performance artwork film, showcasing the histories.
One of our participants, Dee Guthrie, created a new display about the Windrush community in Stroud, for the Museum foyer, and we held a project celebration event in November at the Museum. We collected 12 oral histories in 5 hours of new recorded and transcribed material for researchers, historians and the public to access. There is a new series of birth history colelction items donated to the Museum and a temporary exhibit of birth histories in the Collector’s Room.
listening/shouting – Performance Film
As artists, we have made our own response to the project and what we have heard.
In a series of performance works we brought some of the stories as audio recordings into the landscape around Stroud.
CW: In this film there are references to childbirth, baby loss and medical trauma.
The Baby Makers: Making History Film
This film directed by White Rabbit Films features some of the stories including references to fostering, adoption, racism and other aspects of medical and maternal care.
Summary Presentation
Successful Workshops with Participants
As part of the Birth Histories project “The Baby Makers: Making History” we held two workshops.
We are so deeply grateful to those awesome women who showed up and shared their stories. They were all powerful and moving, and are enriching understandings of Stroud’s social and maternal history.
Sunday 7 July 11am-1pm – Black History – Birth and maternity in Stroud
Supported by Stroud Against Racism and open to all who have a recent or older story to share, about Black history and histories of childbirth and reproduction, involving Black folks and people of colour, of any heritage.
Wednesday 10 July – Pre-1980’s stories
Supported by Stroud Local History Society, this session was open to all who had a story from the 1980s or before.
Both events were held in the Collector’s room at Stroud’s Museum in the Park.
“It was a lovely experience – thank you”
Workshop participant – birth histories
What Happened At The Workshops?
At the events we showed some items from the Museum collections, to start conversation, and we offered materials and prompts for writing, doodling, collage and other ways to express yourself. With permissions, we recorded audio and video material for the project. This is not compulsory and written consent has been sought for everything we will use.
We had some really rich a powerful conversations, learning about practices of birth in the past, reflecting on how things have changed, and making new connections. We also encountered powerful conversations about the experiences of the Windrush generation in Stroud, and their descendants.
We are bringing missing histories into the Museum collection and changing the future for the public visitors and researchers.
