Procreate Project Manifesto

Established in 2013, Procreate Project is a pioneering arts organisation supporting the development of contemporary artists who are also mothers working across art-forms. Procreate Project is place of knowledge, representation, artistic production, publication and experimentation.

We work to support people who make, research, study, teach, produce, care and write about the maternal experience or they do all the above while mothering, creating the prime conditions for the production of works that would not otherwise be created.

By conceiving new models and platforms that facilitate the happening of a solid artistic development and increased visibility, we want to make social changes that benefit women and their families.

Through art we want to unpack and put light on stereotypes and assumptions for which women cannot pursue their creative goals when raising small children.

Today Procreate Project offers online and offline platforms and opportunities for the display, screen and staging of works and connections with peers and organisations that can support artists at different stages of their development.

Focus

  • Hold events that challenge the stereotypes of pregnancy and maternal art and make significant social and cultural changes.
  • Empower women from around the world during this life transforming experience and create more space and representation for women, mothers in the contemporary art world
  • Raise awareness of the positive impact becoming a mother can bring for the mothers and their collaborators: Mothers can be the bravest, most determined, creative and passionate people to work with.
  • Facilitate the realization of new artistic work and visibility
  • Provide a source of information on subjects including art and maternity, from interdisciplinary prospectives.
  • Provide studio spaces with integrated childcare around the UK . See the Mother House Studio Model

Mission

  • Build a platform that can provide practical help and financial support for artists and help artists build and combine their existence as mothers with their practice.
  • Connect artists with the forefront of creative business, creating networks and links with relevant movements, scenes and diverse niche groups.
  • Support, showcase and promote artists’ projects through on and off line events, activities and campaigns.
  • Develop communities that encourage open discussions between mothers and audience.
  • Provide a studio space, facilities and flexible childcare to enable creative development.

Thoughts from the founder

” Mothers should be supported. There is a profound need in society of understanding what motherhood means, the invisible unpaid labour of caring for a child and raise him or her into an adult in this society should be evaluated and recognised and not ignored.
Furthermore, women should be able to talk loudly about each aspect of their life as mothers. They should not feel inhibited during sex, pregnancy, not during birth and not after. “

You cannot be inhibited when creating art as you cannot feel inhibited when creating life.

The art of motherhood should be normalised, felt, extemporaneous, and not judged as boring, or not “sexy” enough to reach the big audience.

To me art is about expression, intense feelings, experiences, chaos, madness, profundity, richness, blood, love. I would use the same words to describe motherhood. If not oppressed by patriarchal schemes radicated in people’s brain, a woman should be able to find full empowerment during this time as a human and as an artist.

Starting from this awareness then we can try to create more infrastructures that facilitate a woman in pursuing her career while nurturing her practice as a mother.

– Dyana Gravina

Present and future goals

  • Tour internationally displaying artists’ work via exhibits, festivals and conferences.
  • Investing financially in artists’ work via fundraising and commercial productions’ profits, such as ticket sales and space rental.
  • Build a strong community and create engagement between women’s made art and buyers.
  • Build solid collaborations with street art galleries and curators to annually develop initiatives and exhibitions in partnership while creating opportunities and visibility.

WHO WE ARE

Dyana Gravina
Founder and creative director

Paola Lucente
Director and Curator

Elisa Terren
Director

Elisa Fontana
head of educational programme for the Mother House Studios

OUR AMBASSADORS

Bracha L. Ettinger
artist-painter, artist-theorist, psychoanalyst and philosopher, pioneer thinker on the matrixial space and the maternal subject.

Antonella Gambotto-Burke
critic, journalist and novelist

Nora Weller
Executive Director at Cambridge Academy of Global Affairs – a pioneer in promoting peace, reconciliation and cultural exchange through advancement of women’s rights and art and cultural heritage protection

Laura Godfrey-Isaacs
Artist, Midwife, Feminist academic & activist. Founder of Home Live Art

Art galleries partners and supporters