Our projects: A comprehensive list of the platforms created under PCP with practical examples of application of the principles.
This section shows how the principles of integrated care have been applied across Procreate Project’s platforms. Each initiative grew from the urgency to create sustainable, caring, and equitable models for systemic change in the cultural sector. The following case studies – from Mother House Studios and the Oxytocin programme, to the Mother Art Prize, the Procreate Project Archive, commissions, and residencies – demonstrate how strategies of access, sustainability, and care have been translated into real-world practices, shaping new models for the arts and beyond.
The platforms and initiatives developed through Procreate Project have grown out of necessity, vision, and community resilience. For the first five years, most activities were carried out with little or no resources, relying on partnerships, in-kind support, and the unpaid labour of artists, parents, and allies who believed in the urgency of making visible and supporting the practices of artists with caring responsibilities. Many artists contributed their time and work for free, not out of surplus, but out of solidarity and a shared recognition that opportunities for artist-parents were almost absent in the cultural field internationally.
This acknowledgement is given both to recognise the unpaid labour that goes into the formation of grassroots initiatives, and to demonstrate that establishing practices of accessibility and care within different infrastructures does not require impossible budgets – it can be achieved through simple, practical considerations when supported by the right intentions.
This collective effort built the foundations of what later became a recognised model. From grassroots, DIY beginnings, the platforms have gradually expanded with the support of project-based public funding and private donations. Each project has been an experiment in applying the principles and practices set out in this Toolkit, testing what care looks like in practice, how structures can shift, and how visibility and opportunities for artist-parents can be sustained.
Artists’ Studios with Integrated Care
Overview
The Mother House Studios is the first artists studio model with Integrated Care, where children are actively welcome into the workspace.
The Mother House Studios is a pioneering solution to a proven lack of viable provision that adequately supports professional artists during pregnancy and motherhood/parenthood. By adapting existing venues into vibrant, affordable arts studios, this model re‑imagines how care and creativity can coexist.
Editions and Impact
- 2016 – London (IKLECTIK Art Lab)
First Mother House Studios pilot in collaboration with Amy Dignam. Thirty-five artists with children tested an integrated studio and childcare model, proving that creative practice and care could coexist.
- 2017 – London & Stroud
Further pilots co-organised with collaborators. Explored financial sustainability and developed intentional childcare practices with Elisa Fontana, strengthening the ethos of the model. - 2018 – London
Secured first public funding (Mayor of London, Lewisham Council, Esmée Fairbairn Foundation) and a successful crowdfunding campaign, giving the project wider recognition. - 2021 – Catford (Catford Mews)
First longer-term home with a large studio and playroom, Co-organised with Paola Lucente. It was built from upcycled materials. Embedded the model in a community hub, deepening roots in Lewisham. - 2023 – Lewisham (House on the Hill)
Relocation after eviction. Marked a period of transition to a new venue: Paola Lucente led community holding, while Dyana Gravina developed the Integrated Care Toolkit. Strengthened the project’s resilience and adaptability. - 2025 – Lewisham (Community Interest Company)
Transition to an independent, artist-led CIC. A collective of community directors takes shared leadership, ensuring decentralisation, long-term care, and sustainability.
Core features of the model include:
- Two (or more) interconnected spaces: studio areas organised into assigned sections or separate rooms for different artistic practices, and a children’s room resourced and guided by a dedicated facilitator.
- Shared responsibility: childcare facilitators and parents jointly care for the children, while an open work space and communal kitchen foster moments of collaboration, reflection, and sustainable integration of life and work.
- A model built on key observations: recognition that childcare remains underfunded and scarce. Conventional models tend to separate caregivers from children and from creative work; and the expensive, inflexible nature of mainstream childcare fails artists, especially those on low or uncertain incomes.
Organisational and relational sustainability:
Today, the Lewisham satellite studios are run by a collective of resident artists who have been part of the project since its early days.
A collective organisational structure has been developed, shaped through four circles of engagement and responsibility:
- eight directors of the CIC (rotating annually);
- thirteen members with specific roles across administration, finance, housekeeping, artist relationships and marketing;
- the wider community of artists holding day-to-day responsibilities for the shared environment;
- an advisory board offering long-term guidance and support.
Environmental Responsibility
The furniture of the studios was designed and built entirely from recycled materials, in partnership with 3 Little Boards and Cosmic Constructions. Using exhibition waste from major institutions such as Tate, the process not only minimised environmental impact but also embedded sustainability into the daily life of the space, making repair, reuse, and resourcefulness part of its core ethos.
Testimonials:
“One of the most innovative civic initiatives in London. The Mother House Studios has the potential to inspire step change in various sectors and the project will have a much bigger impact if spread around the city.”
Sadiq Khan, The Mayor of London
“Being a mother meant my work dwindled to almost nothing. I was losing myself. Through Motherhouse I started painting again. I felt connected to artists with shared challenges. It transformed how I think about myself. Hearing my 2-year old giggling & singing while I work makes me realise I don’t have to compromise. We were both stimulated & satisfied”
Jessica Bladford
“I was going down into my own world and had a conflicted relationship with my child. Joining the Mother House was a life-changing experience for me and my son. Before we took part in the pilot, I worked alone from home, unable to meet childcare and studio rental costs. The Mother House offered us a community of inspiring, talented artists and their children. I could not have imagined a more creative setting in which to have ideas and work on projects, both independently and collaboratively. Thanks to the Mother House I developed a large body of work which will be exhibited over the next year”
Sophia Jones, Illustrator.
Conference & Performance Programme
Overview
Oxytocin is an interdisciplinary event about mothers and carers that brings together live performance, talks, and workshops across university campuses. Each edition uses dispersed spaces, corridors, classrooms, chapels, courtyards, and lecture rooms to host work and conversation, with family rooms, live streaming links to talks, and clear content notes across the site. It offers a platform for artists to make and present work about childbirth and care in contexts where it is often absent. Importantly, it exposes and challenges intersectional biases within medical and cultural systems, proposing strategies for more equitable, humanised experiences of reproduction, pregnancy, and childbirth.
Editions & Impact
- 2017 — Royal College of Art, London: A one‑day symposium merging live art, installations, and panels with midwives, academics, mental health professionals, and activists. Topics included female sexuality, birth, depression, and human rights, encouraging critical collaboration between art, midwifery, and academia.
- 2019 — King’s College London, Guy’s Campus: In partnership with Birth Rites Collection and King’s Florence Nightingale Faculty of Nursing, the event used lecture halls, chapels, and corridors to question stereotypes around mothering, especially as experienced by LGBTQIA+ families, through performance, panels, and site‑specific works.
- 2023 — Science Gallery London & Middlesex University: Titled Oxytocin: Collective Care, the programme delved into reproductive justice, exploring challenges facing BIPOC, neurodivergent, disabled, and LGBTQIA+ experiences in maternity and primary care settings.
Core Features
- Integrated, mobile programming: Events are spread across unconventional spaces — chapel steps, courtyards, corridors — to dissolve boundaries between art, care, and academic inquiry and offer different entry points and ways of learning.
- Supportive care access: Family rooms offered caregivers real-time access to discussions via livestream, ensuring no one had to choose between care and participation. Content notes across venues allowed informed attendance.
- Challenging systemic bias: Across editions, Oxytocin surfaced biases in medical and cultural systems, centring intersections of race, gender, disability, and parental identity, and inviting dialogue on how to humanise childbirth and care systems with an interdisciplinary strategy and network of partnerships.
- Expanded accessibility: In 2023, additional access resources included transcripts, live streaming, and BSL interpretation of both talks and performances. These measures not only supported disabled audiences but also generated the most diverse participation since the festival began.
- Childcare support during display and workshops: In addition to family rooms, artists were provided with ad-hoc childcare support while delivering workshops or performing. Children were looked after in the family room, or supported while witnessing their parents’ performances.
Examples of Sustainability & Care in Practice
- Organisational & relational: Resource-sharing and intergenerational exchange was facilitated through cross-sector collaboration with universities, museums, midwives, birth rights advocates, and performance makers.. For many attendees, this was the first time they had experienced a setting where art, hands-on workshops, and networking held the same value as academic expertise, breaking down entrenched hierarchies of knowledge.
- Financial & access models: Participation for under-represented artists was made accessible thanks to projects relying on mixed funding streams, institutional hosting, Arts Council support, and in-kind partnerships. A number of free tickets were reserved, and a sliding-scale ticketing system was in place. Post-pandemic, expectations around free access to midwifery events required further adaptation, with tickets offered at heavily discounted or no cost, lowering projected income but ensuring greater accessibility and wider reach. For future editions, certificates of attendance for health workers are planned to strengthen professional uptake.
- Knowledge-sharing outputs: An illustrated zine capturing key insights from the 2023 edition is being developed. This will be distributed among participants and through NHS networks, extending the programme’s messages directly into healthcare contexts.
- Extended reach: High-quality documentation of Oxytocin 2023 was presented the following week to an audience of 18,000 health professionals through the Midwifery Hour platform, significantly amplifying the programme’s impact beyond immediate attendees.
- Access and communication: BSL interpretation, transcripts, and the invitation for attendees to send directly any specific access needs outside of what was already listed online created a culture of openness and responsiveness.
Testimonials
“Thank you once more for sharing your time, talents and joy with me and all who tuned in last evening for the Midwifery hour. It was such an insightful session and always makes me think and reflect when I’m listening to creative people like you. I know your work with Oxytocin Collective Care is making a huge difference to the world and the privilege of being a small part of that yesterday was a huge pleasure”
Sheena Byron, Consultant midwife and head of midwifery, Director of All4maternity
“Thank you very much not just for the performance I presented, but for Oxytocin as a whole, as a living and complex organism that was born from your urgency to collectively discuss motherhood and social justice. It was an honor to present my performance in such a potent context with amazing people. I ended the performance feeling something magical, feeling this strength of being in the right place at the right time contributing to something much bigger than myself. So I feel deeply grateful to you for opening that door and trusting my artwork. I truly believe that events like this are irreplaceable. “
Rubiane Maia Performing artist
“ I feel that you have given me a part of myself back’
Rebecca Weeks, Performing artist
“Thank you again for thinking of me to document the festival… Indeed I am male, white and able and… aware it is time to give space to other people to take on my privilege.
To document life performances and events like the one that you just organised oxygenates my mind and it allows me to stay critically alive.”
Event photographer
International Open Call for Artists with Caring Responsibilities
Overview
The Mother Art Prize is the only international open call dedicated to self-identifying women and non-binary visual artists with caring responsibilities. It provides crucial visibility and support to practitioners whose caregiving identities are often unacknowledged in cultural institutions.
Editions & Impact
Between 2017 and 2023, participation grew from around 70 to over 600 entries from 36 countries. Exhibitions and public programmes have been hosted at venues including 198 Contemporary Arts and Learning and Mimosa House, creating platforms where work on care and parenting could be shared, valued, and critically engaged.
Core Features
- Inclusive open-call process: Entry is kept intentionally affordable (£10–£15 for up to three artworks). Each call clearly states: “If the fee is an issue for you, please get in touch”, ensuring no one is excluded.
- Transparent financial practice: All entry fees are reinvested into the production of the prize, including exhibitions, residencies, and cash awards.
- Group show format: Instead of awarding a single “winner,” the Prize culminates in a group exhibition where multiple artists are presented. This allows a broader range of practices to gain visibility, fosters exchange between peers, and ensures that recognition and resources are distributed more equitably. Through this model, artists benefit from different awards delivered in partnership with other organisations, creating diverse forms of support such as residencies, commissions, or professional development opportunities.
- Anonymous selection: All submissions were reviewed anonymously, with no CV required. Only visual material, artwork descriptions, and an artist statement were considered, ensuring equity and reducing bias.
- Flexible entry: Works could be submitted regardless of when they were made, recognising the non-linear nature of artistic practice for caregivers.
- Partnerships and structural impact: Partnerships with commercial galleries, universities, and individuals within major institutions have been actively pursued, to expand resources and opportunities available (exhibition spaces, mentoring, and financial support for new commissions), while generating a wider range of awards for international artists. These collaborations increase visibility for parent-artists and normalise caregiving as a theme in cultural contexts where it had previously been marginalised. They also extend recognition to artists often excluded from the mainstream ‘art radar’ due to economic, cultural, or caregiving barriers.
Sustainability & Care in Practice
- Financial accessibility: Public funding, material grants, and institutional support ensure that access and participation is not contingent on income.
- Visibility and representation: Exhibitions by care-giving artists in high-profile venues amplifies public visibility and professional recognition, while effectively embedding / integrating caregiving within artistic identity.
- Community building: Through workshops, talks, and showcase events, the Prize fosters solidarity and exchange among artists navigating parenting and creative life.
- Hybrid award model: Awards include residencies, exhibitions, material support, and mentoring, combining financial stability with artistic development. The group-show model is part of this ethos, redistributing recognition and support across several artists rather than reinforcing competitive, individualistic hierarchies.
Testimonials
“Dyana Gravina was the first one to give recognition to my practice. Since receiving the Mother Art Prize there has been a progressive yet significant shift in the perspective of my practice and artistic identity. It was also wonderful to see my work exhibited at the Left Overs exhibition (MAP 2017 group show at 198 Contemporary Arts and Learning) and in a new environment as animators usually display their work at film festivals. What has really transpired, is that The Divide can now be seen as a method of challenging the parameters of documentary practice through animation.”
Mary Martins, visual artist
“Procreate Project is a vitally important space that supports and champions artists who are carers, (m)others or parents. Procreate Project understands the elastic fragility of what it means to make and show artwork, at the same time as having competing caring responsibilities. At this very surreal and anxious time that we are all living through, spaces like this are extremely rare and extra special, so I am very grateful to Procreate Project and the Mother Art Prize for existing and supporting our work.”
Helen Benigson, Mother Art Prize 2020 Winner
“The Mother Art Prize showed my work in the early stages of my practice and provided me with visibility and a professional network. These formed relationships became a meaningful vehicle for my further development as an artist. As an emerging mother and artist I felt that working with other art professionals who were also parents provided me with modelling and nurturing when I needed it most.”
Anna Perach, Mother Art Prize 2018 shortlisted artist
The open call allowed us to engage with a number of different practices and issues around motherhood and identity. The works selected for the exhibition encouraged us to question how motherhood, fertility, death and identity are being understood from different cultural perspectives and cultural intentions and I hope future Mother Art Prize exhibitions will continue in this direction.
Pauline De Souza, Diversity Art Forum
Procreate Project Digital Archive of Art by Mothers and Parents
Overview
The Procreate Project Archive is a live and growing digital and physical platform that hosts downloadable art posters created by artists who are mothers and parents. Conceived as a response to the invisibility and isolation of unpaid care work, the Archive creates visibility and community by platforming work outside of market logics, and offering a supportive framework for practices that are often marginalised. Its format invites wide participation, as works can be downloaded, printed, and displayed anywhere, reclaiming both public and digital space.
Editions and Impact
- Launch and growth: First presented in December 2015 at the Women’s Art Library (MAKE), Goldsmiths, with 130 international artists in a photo-zine format. The digital iteration of the Archive grew within four months, with over 200 artists displayed in 16 sites across the UK.
- Public visibility: Posters and zines have been exhibited not only in cultural institutions such as Modern Art Oxford, Ovada, The Old Fire Station, Hastings Contemporary and the Science Gallery, but also in everyday public sites including Lewisham Shopping Centre, hoardings, cafes, billboards, and community centres.
- Reaching wider audiences: By locating the Archive in daily life spaces, audiences who might not normally access or feel welcome in art venues encountered the work. This created opportunities for reflection, conversation, and validation of personal experiences thanks to the images and stories presented.
- Impact on artists: Artists involved described feeling valued beyond the judgements of a biased art market, reconnecting with the worth of their practice through an aligned public, and finding solidarity within a growing movement.
- Impact on communities: Staff, partners, and audiences also benefited by engaging with lived experiences and creativity in ways accessible to different resources, physical access needs, and contexts.
Core Features
- Visibility beyond institutions: Displaying artworks on billboards, hoardings, shopping centres and other non-traditional sites gave visibility to caregivers’ practices beyond the usual confines of the art world.
- Free and shareable access: Posters and zines were made easily available online, allowing anyone to download, print, and disseminate works. This created a decentralised and democratic model for participation and visibility.
- Community building: The Archive became more than an exhibition tool, fostering solidarity among artists navigating motherhood, caregiving, and creative work. It provided a platform that values process and practice, rather than productivity or market validation.
- Engagement with diverse publics: By entering everyday life spaces, the Archive reached broad audiences, including those not typically connected to the arts, sparking dialogue around care, creativity, and social value.
Sustainability & Care in Practice
- Catalyst for partnerships: The Archive generated the largest number of partnerships and publicly-facing displays of any Procreate Project platform within a short timeframe, with more than 200 posters displayed across 15 venues in its very first months. Through sustainable collaboration and intentionally distributed responsibilities, through collaboration and distributed responsibility, new collaborations with institutions, community centres, and commercial spaces were successfully sparked.
- Interdisciplinary engagement: Staff, partners, and audiences engaged with lived experience and creativity in formats that were feasible and accessible across different levels of resources and physical access.
- Decentralisation: The Archive achieved sustainability through a decentralised approach. Designed as an open source and reproducible model, institutions, developers, and art collectives can continue to self-organise new displays giving the project more longevity and reach.The Archive demonstrated how care practices and visibility can scale without reproducing extractive models, offering a model for grassroots cultural sustainability.
- Self-sustaining model: The Archive’s downloadable format has enabled international reach , with self-organised displays in the UK, Germany, Austria, and France. This signals its potential as a growing, self-sustaining archive with intergenerational impact.
A platform like the PCP Archive has served as a tool for building interconnected networks in a decentralised way. It emphasised the importance of creating movements – rather than isolated projects – which are more effective at creating sustained opportunities for systemic change and promoting the recognition of care work across sectors and audiences.
Testimonial
“It has been a pleasure to host this activation. If you have any future events that you would like us to host during the summer, then please let us know as we would be more than happy to have you back. The posters were a great addition to our Centre and, I am sure, provoked interesting thoughts and conversations by all that saw them.”
Susan Netto, Retail Manager, Lewisham Shopping Centre
Overview
We have organised art residencies as part of the Mother Art Prize awards, both in partnership with Create London at the White House, Dagenham in 2018 and 2019 as well as at the Mother House Studios which became a new home for international artists visiting on occasion of the Art prize.
Residencies for artists with children cannot be reduced to simply providing a studio and calling it family friendly. Without wider support, the risk is to reproduce the same isolation that primary caregivers experience at home. At the White House, Dagenham, we developed a residency model that placed community and collective participation at the centre of the artist’s experience. This residency demonstrates how the principles of integrated care can be applied in practice. By embedding community in the spatial design of residencies, integrating relational and organisational *sustainability, and valuing caregiving as part of artistic practice, it moves beyond inclusion as a statement towards building truly supportive systems of work and care.
Editions & Impact
The residencies, connected to the Mother Art Prize, were organised in 2018 and 2019. Their impact extended far wider than their immediate participants and beyond their very duration. The local community continued to engage with the White House even after the residencies, proving its value as a cultural and social space of significance for the local residents.
Since then, the residency model has been replicated in Whitehouse future programmes, demonstrating its viability as a blueprint for sustainable and inclusive residencies.
Core Features
- Environmental sustainability: Toys, books, and age-appropriate materials for children were provided, gathered largely through second-hand donations. This reduced waste while involving the community in preparing the space.
- Collective Encounters: Regular tea time gatherings and artist-led workshops brought together children, peers, neighbours, and older generations, creating intergenerational exchanges and building cross-demographic relationships.
- Sustained Participation: We created a place where children thrived in communal spaces with peers and required less exclusive parental attention, while artists were supported through meaningful connections with the local community. This structure allowed artists not only to focus on their practice but also to experience a sustainable rhythm of care, creation, and exchange.
Examples of Sustainability & Care in Practice
- Organisational & relational sustainability: Care was not outsourced or isolated but integrated into the residency, making it part of the collective daily rhythm.
- Environmental sustainability: Reuse of donated toys and materials embedded principles of repair and resourcefulness.
- Relational sustainability: By involving the local community to support the parents-artists in residence, the residency provided a supportive environment for both children and artists/parents, reducing their isolation.
- Financial & structural sustainability: to increase organisation and production capacity, we reached out to surrounding communities and formed partnerships with other organisations / institutions that provided extended resources (through in-kind support, venues, etc.) improving project’s viability.
Overview
The Procreate Project commissions provide artists with caring responsibilities the time, resources, and curatorial support needed to develop ambitious new works. Each commission is tailored to the artist’s personal and professional circumstances, embedding care into every stage of the process. Commissions have been offered as part of the Arts Council England Emergency Response Fund during COVID-19 lockdowns, through the Mother Art Prize awards, and within the Oxytocin Festival programmes, supported financially by Arts Council England and each edition’s partners.
The commissioning model demonstrates how hybrid working, tailored timelines, shared resources, and integrated care can be translated into practical frameworks that support long-term sustainability. By combining curatorial excellence with attention to the lived realities of artist-parents, the commissions enact the tToolkit’s principles of equity, care, and systemic change. The commissions gave artists not only an opportunity for professional development, but also as a moment of affirmation of their coexisting caregiver and artist identities. This combination of tailored timelines, curatorial and emotional support, as well as access to Integrated Care spaces offered wasn’t just an isolated incident, but set an important precedent that modeled a sustainable structure which artists can continue to reference and adopt in their practices.
Core Features
- Hybrid working: Flexible formats allowed artists to balance studio time with remote work, enabling continuity across changing care responsibilities.
- Tailored timelines: Project schedules were adapted around each artist’s needs, including school hours, childcare responsibilities, or periods of rest.
- Curatorial and emotional support: Artists were supported throughout the process, especially when their work involved the voices, testimonies, or participation of others. Emotional labour was acknowledged as part of the creative process.
- Childcare support during display: Childcare was provided for commissioned artists performing at the Oxytocin conferences.
- Welcoming children: Meetings were structured to welcome children, with room for pauses, interruptions, and shorter formats where needed.
- Access to resources: Artists were supported with academic references, cross-disciplinary collaborations, and access to wider research networks during the development phase.
- Community integration: Commissioned artists were invited to use the Mother House Studios facilities, embedding their process in a supportive community with integrated care.
Examples of Sustainability & Care in Practice
- Accessible entry: Short application processes reduced barriers, making the commissions more open and less administratively burdensome.
- Relational care: By creating space for children, pauses, and openness about caregiving realities, the commissions treated care as a valued part of artistic practice.
- Financial sustainability: Partnerships were developed to further place commissioned works in new contexts, exhibitions, or sales platforms, ensuring that the impact of the commission could extend beyond its initial cycle.