What, How and Why
Artists who are mothers and primary caregivers have long been facing systemic bias and barriers in the art world. They account for barely a third of artists represented in major galleries, an inequity compounded by the lack of infrastructures that drive many out during the crucial years of pregnancy and parental labour.
This is not a database. Whether you are creating online workshops, social platforms, exhibitions, residencies or community projects, this Toolkit offers resources, examples, and practical guidance to re-shape and create spaces, politics and practices that centre and support people with caring responsibilities. It aims to engage individuals and organisations to adopt inclusive, non-tokenistic practices within the arts and culture following the principles of Integrated Care contained herein.
Integrated Care is a systematic approach to embedding care in artistic and cultural spaces and initiatives. It goes beyond implementing ‘mainstream childcare’ provisions within these settings, it is about reimagining spaces, politics and practices to be more inclusive, adaptable, and supportive of the needs of those caring for others, as well as a plurality of other needs and experiences.
This Toolkit is not just a service offer or a neutral set of guidelines. This Toolkit is not just a service offer or a neutral set of guidelines without examples of applications. This Toolkit responds to the limits of “uninterrupted time” as a dominant reference for artistic practice. It offers alternative models that can be shared, supported, and referenced collectively.
It is a political platform that exists because something fundamental is missing from cultural infrastructures. Care is not a one-size-fits-all solution, nor something that can be standardised or applied universally. It is relational, situated, and shaped by time, space, resources, and collective conditions. This toolkit offers actionable, tested, and scalable examples that can support artists, organisations, and institutions to implement meaningful and inclusive change across different contexts; yet remaining adaptable and open to translation, questioning, and reworked in response to different spaces and resources available.
We have envisaged this Toolkit and website both as an archival project, preserving the legacy of twelve first-hand grassroots work through Procreate Project that underpins its principles and resources; and as a platform for continued activations, sustaining decentralised, interconnected networks and intergenerational threads. We hope it will inspire fellow artists with caregiving responsibilities, as well as organisations and institutions, to implement care-based practices in their realities.