4-day course (In-person)
University of Kent, Canterbury, CT2 7NU, UK
7th - 10th July 2024, 10:00 – 17:00 (with some late evenings)
Cost: £650 per person / £500 concession (for artists, students and those with a low-income)
15 places available, bookings are secured with a £100 deposit
On-campus accommodation is available to book at an additional fee

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, this year’s themes, and the artworks. The Birth Rites Collection Summer School is is led by artist and BRC Curator Helen Knowles and artist Dr. Leni Dothan.

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.

Summer School workshops will explore the aesthetic, ethical, political and visual discourses of birth via text, film, and performance. In addition, 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. In a dedicated space, these pieces will enrich participants' engagement of the summer school themes. 

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.