Procreate Project

✨ Join us tomorrow
Saturday 18 April
2pm – 5pm
Whitechapel Gallery + online

for the launch of the Integrated Care Toolkit
The Integrated Care Toolkit is a new free, open access resource for artists, organisers and cultural workers interested in embedding Integrated Care in their work

🧸 Together with friend and collaborator we are preparing a Family Room that mirrors the areas and practices of the Toolkit, translating them into interactive art and play spaces for all ages. Bring your children and kin and spend the afternoon with us!

The Toolkit offers guiding principles and practical resources, including examples of alternative models and how to integrate them into public programmes, residencies, presentations and more. It is designed as a generative resource, open to adaptation and translation across contexts.

✨ During the event will guide you through the Toolkit sections, followed by a shared conversation with collaborators and contributors including and .harrison14

🎟 Book via link in bio

✨ Hi! I am Dyana Gravina, founder of Procreate Project and writer of the Integrated Care Toolkit, to be released on Saturday 18 April. Procreate Project began in 2013 as a grassroots arts organisation working towards systemic change and equity for artists who are mothers and primary caregivers.

✧ This Toolkit is grounded in 13 years of hands on work and lived experience as an artist, parent, and migrant in the UK.

✧ Far from an individual process, it has unfolded through conversations, encounters, and time spent together.

✧ Many of these pages began in my living room and online, shaped through dialogue with critical friends and I am grateful for their questions and perspectives. They include Maddalena Fragnito, Katie Deepwell, FRANK with Fatoş Üstek and Celina Loh, Ama Josephine Budge, Alex Martinis Roe, Elisa Fontana, Hettie Judah, Jo Harrison, and former P*P director Paola Lucente

→ During the event I will introduce the Toolkit website and guide people through its areas and resources, before opening up the conversation to those in the room, collaborators, and audiences joining online.

🌍 ALL (ages) welcome! Together with Stefania Zocco, we are designing a Family Room in the main Assembly gallery on the ground floor, where the different sections of the Toolkit will be translated into interactive creative play activities for all ages. Doors open at 1.45 for a 2PM START.

✨ I hope you can join us!

🎟 Book pay what you can tickets via the link in bio



harrison14

CHANGE OF PLANS: Our integrated Care Toolkit release is now postoponed to the 18th of April!

Due to unforeseen circumstances, we need to reschedule the event. We have been informed that the lift at Whitechapel Gallery will be out of service and will not be repaired in time for our event. As our event was being held on the third floor, this represents an access barrier, and we feel that going ahead would impact and limit the experience of the event or stop participation completely.

Thankfully, we have been offered the new date of SATURDAY 18TH OF APRIL, so we are going to postpone the release until then, both at the Whitechapel and online.

Any tickets already booked will, of course, be valid for the new date. We’re very sorry for any inconvenience, and we hope to still see you there after the spring break.

If you haven’t booked a ticket yet, you can find the link in our bio. We’re so excited to gather and share this work with you!

✨ Announcement: A New Chapter for Mother House Studios: Lewisham

Originally founded by Dyana Gravina (dygravina) as part of Procreate Project, Mother House Studios model has always been about reimagining how artists can make art, build community and feel supported, especially while caregiving.

In 2016, the first Mother House Studio was a direct response to the lack of infrastructure for artist mothers and primary caregivers. Since then, and from 2018 together with Paola Lucente (), the project has evolved into a powerful model for care-centred, community-rooted workspaces with integrated space for children.

We are excited to announce that from July 2025, the Lewisham satellite of the Mother House Studios, will be led by a dedicated collective of artists and creatives who have been part of the space since its early days (Introductions will follow). With support and mentoring from the founder during the transition, the Lewisham group has now formed their own Community Interest Company, taking on full management of the studios and community locally.

❤️ While the Lewisham space will be independently run, it remains proudly part of the wider Mother House Studios movement, guided by shared values of care, collaboration, and family inclusion in the arts.

🤝 Dyana will continue to support the project as a founding advisor, joining the Lewisham advisory board.

This marks a joyful handover and a deepening of the decentralised, artist-led nature of the vision behind Mother House Studios and Procreate Project.

Join us for an open studio to celebrate this growth on the 28th of June and follow the new account to connect with the local community.

Thank you to everyone who has shaped this journey so far. We’re excited for what’s ahead.
—

OXYTOCIN, COLLECTIVE CARE: PERFORMANCE highlights

Oxytocin, Collective Care, an interdisciplinary live event about and , returned for its third edition one year ago, May 2023, for an incredible week-long festival that brought together art, health, and communities.

On the first day, May 13th, at Middlesex University (), we had a series of remarkable performances that delved into the themes of “Collective Care”, and responded to the two main panel conversations on “Decolonising Maternity care” and “Exploring the Experiences of Deaf and Disabled People in Maternity Care”.

Waiting for her performance at the today 22 May, we celebrate one of the artists

3️⃣ Laima Leyton’s “I SEE YOU” commissioned piece aimed to shed light on the experiences of disabled parents and those considered high risk during childbirth.

The commissioned performance collected and highlighted the experience of giving birth from the perspective of disabled parents and the ones assessed as high risk. Presented as a collective piece, the work consisted of recordings of personal experiences weaved together as one live sound piece with an incredible BSL interpretation.

This work is commissioned by Procreate Project using public funding from Arts Council England
The programme was also supported by and

📸 by Manuel Vason

✨ Dear community, Dyana and Paola here with some news.

Founded by in 2013 and joined in 2018 by , Procreate Project has now been running for 10 incredible YEARS. We created an organisation that highlights injustices related to unpaid care-work and lack of support for artist- parents, yet the latter heavily relies on the unpaid work of two people caring for the project. This is a tension that we need to acknowledge and unpack.

Also due to politics of affiliation and rewards-based systems, the biggest struggle has been finding unrestricted funds to afford to sustainably grow the expansive vision we have for P*P with a team.

Due to the ongoing financial constraints and lack of resources, we decided to pause all the other projects for 2024 but the (So the Mother Art Prize call won’t open until further notice). We’ll take the next 12 months as a period of research and development, healing & reflection.

✨ On a very bright note, we have been offered substantial financial support from one of the artists whose life was positively changed by the experience at the Mother House when part of the very first pilot project in 2016.

Thanks to this funds we will be able to finally create the Mother House studio model tool-kit and move forward with a lighter internal organisation:

* Dyana will craft the Tool-Kit with digital archival/printed resources with collaborators.
* Paola will manage and grow the Mother House Studios new site in Lewisham.

The Tool-kit is seen as an opportunity to activate intergenerational facilitation of an important tool for socio-cultural change, beyond our current capacity.

It is a radical act to ensure that change can be made more easily when the right time and socio-political climate comes for us, and other people, in the future. A web of intercultural and intergenerational connections which is part of the overall academic and socially engaged practice of its founder.

This IG account will serve from now on to:
*share what we have done in the last 10 y
* send updates about the MH studios
* promote other people’s projects on mothering and care which we are glad to see flourishing

Another exhibition opening this weekend and an important step forward within the collective work on , and work. ‘Act of creation: on art and motherhood’, curated by for .gallery Touring starting at

✨ Special congratulations to some artists whom we have supported and collaborated with over the last 10 years through commissions, conversations, our space and the Mother Art Prize (2017/19/21/23) 👏🏽

——-

The exhibition will address diverse experiences of motherhood across three themes:
Creation, Maintenance and Loss.

Featuring painting, photography, sculpture, sound and film, artists in the exhibition include: Felicity Allen, Janine Antoni, Cassie Arnold, Artists Campaign to Repeal the 8th, Bobby Baker, Clare Bottomley, Elina Brotherus, Lea Cetera, Jai Chuhan, Eileen Cooper, Renee Cox, Dorothy Cross, Rineke Dijkstra, Leni Dothan, Catherine Elwes, Tracey Emin, Jessa Fairbrother, Feministo, VALIE EXPORT, Maeve Gilmore, Anna Grevenitis, Ghislaine Howard, The Hackney Flashers, Camille Henrot, Barbara Hepworth, Susan Hiller, Chantal Joffe, Claudette Johnson, Mary Kelly, Liss LaFleur, Tala Madani, Sally Mann, Wangechi Mutu, Ishbel Myerscough, Everlyn Nicodemus, Catherine Opie, Fani Parali, Celia Paul, Paula Rego, Su Richardson, Jenny Saville, Monica Sjöö, Annegret Soltau, Tabitha Soren, Heather Spears, Hannah Starkey, Emma Talbot, Barbara Walker, Caroline Walker, Carrie Mae Weems, Nancy Willis, Hermione Wiltshire, Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Christine Voge, Del LaGrace Volcano, Carmen Winant and Billie Zangewa.

📷 1. ‘Mother Child machine n.7 commissioned by for 2019 at
2. Cassie Arnold Mom Bra, for the Mother Art Prize 2020 at
3. Hermione Wiltshire presenting at P*P 2017
4. Del LaGrace Volcano presenting at 2019
5. Fani Parali working at our Catford
6. Bobby Baker and Procreate Project founder for a shared artist talk, 2017.

It feels great to see how the Uk, and beyond, is populating with work and exhibition by and about mothering and care work. Excited for the opening of this show ‘A daughter and Feral mothers’ curated by this weekend in SE London where two our artists are showing their work. Congratulations and !

Details of the show on the flyer and and via the artists profiles.

📷 1) ‘Don’t laugh’ commissioned by and curated by for festival.
2) working from the today ❤️

Is any artists in our community are in Sweden, Gothenburg, today 23 Sept, please go meet Procreate Project founder and at . As always family friendly with space for all ages!

——


Today I am in Sweden, with my great companion , for a day at with the wonderful who are doing great work here.

Part of the Gothenburg Biennale, join us on Saturday from 11AM. Link in bio with more info.

Presentation 1PM: I will introduce examples of models that have instigated systemic change and life-changing support for organisations and artists working with Procreate Project. I will draw from personal experiences and academic research to discuss how a patriarchal capitalist development, linked with the emergence of the nuclear family, still impacts the way we perceive care work and informs current systems and initiatives, even those with a ‘feminist’ inspiration. 

A point for reflection will be dedicated to the q***ring potential of the Mother*, to reframe ‘mother’ as main subject for an anti patriarchal coalition, offering expansion and allow new radical collective care models to emerge.

At 15.45-16.45 I will facilitate a workshop to integrate the theoretical and conversational material explored earlier in the day.

Despite the deep level of physicality that giving birth and mothering involve, we can experience a sense of detachment from our own se*uality while our bodies become vectors of care, love and nourishment for others.

While unpacking the culturally predetermined ways in which we experience ourselves and our bodies when parenting, we will use somatic approaches and movement as tools for embodied art making and the creation of new narratives around the imagery of the Mother*/parent.

Ph 1 by the great



***r