Birth professionals make art. Using participatory arts to think about being a birthing professional

Abstract

Midwifery and obstetric practices, within a stressful period of austerity for the NHS with litigation fears and pressure from the media, have an impact on the experience of all those involved: women giving birth and birthing professionals. In The Birth Project the arts are being used to interrogate this complex topic. Obstetricians, midwives, and new mothers have been given the opportunity to explore their experiences of compassion fatigue, stress, birth suffering and post-natal readjustments using the arts. These different groups have joined together in ‘mutual recovery’ events in which perspectives have been shared, primarily through elucidation of the art works produced, captured using documentary filmmaking. The raison d’etre of this project is to create dialogue between different communities of interest and experience, to use the arts to interrogate discourses, to challenge embedded assumptions, and in this process, to stimulate mutual recovery between all those who experience and are affected by birth. We situate this endeavour in the context of an emerging practice of health humanities (Crawford et al. 2014). A series of workshops with birth professionals, including professional doulas, who may have experienced vicarious trauma, whose traumatising experience is often overlooked, have used the arts to explore their experiences. This film narrates their concerns and reveals their artistic engagement.