made in lockdown

Working with a group of parents and babies born during the lockdown we explored the experience of having a baby in a global pandemic, questioned the role of unpaid care work within society and also celebrated and witnessed retrospectively the birth of the children during lockdown. We made a space where people could build a community network, have a good time and also co-design a final event and as with all parent and toddler groups the only thing the members had in common was the fact they had had children at the same time and so this made for a rich and varied collection of people.

The three students working on the project were valuable members of the project , offering their own perspectives, some of them had babies, some didn't, they brought their own fresh energy to the project and it was all the richer for having them involved. The event was a celebration for all the babies of the town and also an opportunity for the parents to meet and reflect and talk with a performance for musician/ mother Neon Hitch. The themes we had been talking about over the course of the three months were reflected in the sofas, for example we had a 'poetry sofa' and a 'value of care sofa'

Each week we had various topics of discussion or visiting artists to provide an impetus for the conversation. For example one week was a gig from local musician and parent Iwan Huws, one week a pram walk along the seafront with poetry being read by local poet/PhD student and mother Mari Ellis Dunning. Artist Tim Bromage performed magic in the park, asking parents to question cosmic acts of disappearance and appearance , life and death. The final event took place in the bandstand in Aberystwyth, co-designed by the group, we filled the space with sofas, and a different member of the group hosted a different sofa offering up questions and activities.