Networks Networks

A.M.M.A.A. is an archive and research project mapping mother artists in Asia and Asian diasporas. It documents artistic practice, residencies, conversations and biographical connections between care, motherhood, heritage and contemporary art.

Within BÄM, a working group on care in the arts and design has been established. Further, BÄM! deveops sustainable formats through evening schools, regular meetups, publications, and talks that build networks to increase the visibility of FLINTA individuals and foster collective action.

ARIM is a self-directed, open and free artist residency embedded in everyday life. Rather than treating parenthood as an obstacle, ARIM understands motherhood, care time and domestic reality as valuable sites of artistic research and production.

Art after Baby is a South African project by the Independent Network for Contemporary Culture & Art. It supports artists who are mothers or who have experienced pregnancy, loss and related biographical ruptures through mentoring, visibility, exhibitions, skills development and economic empowerment structures.

The network shares the experiences, needs, and resources of its members, aiming to foster empowering alliances and bring together collective strength to drive necessary change in the cultural sector.

In light of increasing attacks on and restrictions of critical perspectives—as well as the polemical questioning of politically engaged art and scholarship—art of intervention explores the potential of culture in connection with critical thinking and political mobilization. Core themes include (queer) feminism, care, diversity and inclusion, anti-racism, and innovative forms of knowledge production.

The Art Working Parents Alliance is a UK-based peer network for parents working in the arts. Through raising awareness, regional and sector-specific groups, mentoring, events and resources, the initiative campaigns for better working conditions and a more inclusive arts sector.

Artist/Mother is a podcast and community for working artists who are also mothers or caregivers. Through interviews, exhibitions, retreats, publications and exchange formats, the platform supports artistic practice and parenthood as simultaneously active areas of life and work.

The Artist Parent Index is a searchable database for artists whose work addresses parenthood or relates to it in some way. The platform creates visibility, discoverability and historical documentation for art at the intersection of parenthood and artistic practice.

Babes in Arms is a collective of female artists and mothers from Hastings and St Leonards. The initiative creates spaces for exchange, artistic work and workshops in which children are not excluded, but are instead considered an integral part of everyday life and creative practice.

Both Artist and Mother is a digital interview and archive project by Kate Fisher. It documents stories and conversations with women artists, especially ceramic artists, who are also mothers, fostering exchange, encouragement and visibility in the field.

Combining a theater career—whether on or behind the scenes—with family life is a major challenge. There is a lack of family-oriented structures that make a fulfilling and financially sustainable professional life possible. This association (translation: Stage Mothers) brings together theater professionals who build networks, share experiences, and work toward new structures in the theater landscape. We represent all disciplines, both on and behind the stage, in municipal theaters as well as in the independent scene.

The Center for Parenting Artists supports the coexistence of family life and creative practice. The platform gathers resources, information and opportunities for exchange for artist-parents and highlights structural questions around care and artistic production.

The Creative Mothers Project is a grassroots initiative in Leeds. It offers mothers and pregnant women a supportive, practical and creative space where they can combine artistic practice, motherhood and mutual empowerment.

Cultural ReProducers is a platform and community for cultural workers who are raising children. It gathers resources on family-friendly residencies, organizes exchange and supports an arts and cultural landscape in which parenthood is recognized as part of professional practice.

Founded in 2020, the working group has since engaged in regular exchanges to identify current gaps in the dance scene and funding systems, while developing concrete solutions. To build a network with relevant community members and activists, the group invites guests from across disciplines and cultural policy to participate in these discussion rounds.

As the host organization of the working group, Tanzbüro München contributes to the sustainable improvement of production conditions for contemporary dance in Munich by facilitating the exchange of ideas and resources and engaging in cultural policy work. In doing so, it also strengthens the visibility of the local dance scene on both national and international levels. In addition to its own initiatives—such as the international exchange project “Meeting Points”—the group’s core focus lies in providing professional development and advisory services for Munich-based dance professionals.

Desperate Artwives is a collective of female artists, many of whom are mothers or care workers. Through exhibitions, performances, takeovers, talks and activism, the collective challenges societal expectations surrounding motherhood, femininity and artistic practice.

Launched in 2021 as part of the first online networking event, the initiative focused on sharing experiences and exploring self-empowerment strategies for so-called "artist parents."

In 2022, the second digital edition expanded the conversation by integrating academic perspectives on the tensions between parenthood and the arts. In addition, practical proposals and political demands were formulated, highlighting the challenge of navigating parenthood and an artistic career between flexibility and structure.

Eye Mama is a global photography platform that makes the “mama gaze” visible. The project brings together photographic perspectives on motherhood, care, family, home and the body, understanding motherhood inclusively, including IVF, adoptive, foster, LGBTQ+ and gender-diverse experiences.

Through its project kunst+care, the alliance addresses the compatibility of care work and artistic production. The goal is to improve funding structures at both state and federal levels and to ensure full participation in the art sector.

Through collective processes, the group engages artistically with themes such as motherhood*, reproduction, and care work in the context of art and society. The collective advocates for the visibility of care-giving artists and for creating art with and around children. FLÜGELMUETERE claims this process as equally valid as art that is produced and exhibited in spaces not shared with children, challenging conventional artistic canons.

galerie asterisk* dedicates a solo exhibition to artists in the year their child is born. All births are retrospectively archived as exhibitions. In this way, galerie asterisk* takes a political stand against exclusionary practices in the art world. The aim is to build a network through artists’ biographies: visible and recognizable.

Hidden Mothers draws on the historical figure of the ‘hidden mother’ and applies it to contemporary experiences of isolation, stigma and invisibility. Tereza Bušková’s project aims to empower migrant and isolated mothers in particular through participatory art, film and public presentations.

The guidelines set out specific recommendations for institutions, residencies and arts organisations to ensure that artists with children are not systematically excluded. They focus on communication, travel arrangements, breastfeeding facilities, scheduling, visibility and family-friendly project organisation.

HOWL Magazine was an Australian magazine at the intersection of creativity and motherhood. It brought together artistic, photographic and narrative perspectives on mothering, creative work, care, identity and artistic expression.

InFems is a feminist arts organisation that empowers women and girls from diverse backgrounds to tell their stories and engage with the arts. Through exhibitions, talks, symposia and workshops, it combines artistic practice with intersectional feminism.

The initiative combines curatorial research, artistic practice and care work. It sees itself less as a traditional collective and more as an ecosystem of artists, healers, thinkers and practitioners that explores new forms of sustainable institutions, solidarity and interdependence.

Due to the empirical and very practice-orientated research that K&K has conducted since 2018 on networking and exhibition work, there is a broader basis for discussion in the debate on art production and care work.

K&K operates at the interface of artistic collective and political initiative and has created an important platform for artists with care tasks in recent years, organizes exhibitions, discursive meetings, actions in public space and regularly sends out newsletters. All activities are about networking, working together on projects and pooling information.

The collective follows a consistently constructive approach—aiming not only to diagnose societal issues but also to envision utopias and develop socio-ecological perspectives. The seven artist-mothers from various fields of the performing arts developed a solidarity-based working model during their first production, UnSichtBar, at Theater Rampe as part of their residency at the 6tagefrei Festival 2021/22. This model pools individual resources through collaboratively negotiated part-time and full-time arrangements, enabling the reconciliation of motherhood and artistic practice.

The network stands for the recognition of the following as a common practice:

• the general acceptance of career gaps due to care work
• the elimination of age restrictions for grants and awards
• residency grants that include childcare and additional support for care-related costs
• the announcement of location-independent grants
• support for re-entering the professional field after a family phase

Both photographers share a deep passion for self-portraiture and have recognized self-portraits as a powerful medium to express what matters most to them.

Their greatest mission as photographers is to make the invisible visible through images and to communicate meaningful messages. They are particularly committed to raising awareness of structural inequality, intersectionality, and the significance of care in all its forms.

In addition to hosting workshops and talks, the two photographers run the Wizual Labor—a photography community and think tank for all FLINTA* photographers, artists, and those who aspire to become one. The Labor was founded as a space for exchange, solidarity, experimentation, and collective empowerment.

Literary Mama is an online literary magazine exploring the many faces of motherhood. It publishes poetry, prose, essays, reviews and reflections, inviting writers to explore the physical, psychological, intellectual and spiritual experiences of mothering through literature.

M(other) Art Collective describes itself as a collective of artist-parents in the North West of England. Its focus appears to be on exchange, shared visibility and creative meet-ups for artists with parenting or care responsibilities.

M/Others Who Make is an international initiative for women and non-binary people who work in the creative sector and have caregiving responsibilities. Through peer support, hubs, mentoring, events and creative opportunities, it empowers people who do not wish to pit their artistic and caregiving identities against one another.

M.A.R.S. emerged from the ongoing discourse around the dual role of being both an artist and a mother*, a role that presents participating artists with numerous challenges. The group explores the many dimensions of motherhood* and seeks to use them as a space for artistic inquiry—without being reduced to the role of "mother*" alone. Their artistic research investigates what artistic practice can look like with or despite children, enabling dialogue and collaboration across disciplines and materials. This research process is informed by everyday, personal narratives and the contextual knowledge they generate.

MAMSIE stands for Mapping Maternal Subjectivities, Identities and Ethics and is closely associated with the journal Studies in the Maternal. The platform opens up scholarly and cultural-theoretical debates on motherhood, subjectivity, ethics, the body, care and representation.

Maternal Art is an independent British magazine and platform for artists engaging with the maternal. Through publications, blog posts, exhibitions and promotion, it supports artist-mothers in gaining visibility and reaching new audiences.

Through collective artistic processes, they contribute to shaping the discourse on motherhood while making contemporary feminist perspectives on motherhood(s) in the arts visible. Their artistic practice focuses on inclusive, community-driven experiments as alternatives to traditional structures of art production—for example, through autobiographical responses to classic feminist texts or performances that incorporate children's games.

Maternal Journal is an international community movement that uses creative journaling to promote well-being during pregnancy, childbirth and parenthood. The initiative offers free exercises, resources and group sessions in which writing, drawing and reflection serve as a form of self-care.

Matki twórczynie is a Warsaw-based group of female artists and mothers. It organises initiatives such as residential programmes with mentoring for female artists with young children, and highlights how motherhood, artistic practice and institutional conditions can be considered together.

Artists who are mothers must be recognized as a legitimate enrichment of the art world.

The initiative also considers it urgent to expand funding opportunities for artists with children. It calls for the creation of grants specifically designed for artists who are mothers, as well as the adaptation of residency conditions to accommodate family circumstances.

MOMTRA documents voices and reflections by artist-parents on priorities, support, work and care.

The Mother Art Prize is an international open call for visual artists who identify as women or non-binary and who have care responsibilities. It promotes visibility, exhibitions and recognition for artistic work shaped by care, motherhood and structural inequality.

Mother Artists Making Art is a movement and peer-support format that strengthens the visibility of mother+artists. In safe meeting spaces, artists who are mothers or who give birth explore the connections between identity, the body, art, exchange, play and mutual support.

Mother House Studios is a studio model initiated by Procreate Project that incorporates childcare. It creates affordable, child-friendly workspaces where artistic practice and caregiving responsibilities are not separated, but are integrated both spatially and organisationally.

Mother Makers is a network for exchange and dialogue among female artists, designers and mothers. The initiative explores how artistic production can continue amidst the demands of childcare, and develops strategies that do not ignore these constraints but use them as a starting point.

We host international online conferences and share information about events, initiatives, books, films, and much more on our Instagram account.

For collab-posts on Instagram and any other information email the initiative.

Motherlore is a magazine and zine focusing on creativity, care, matrescence, nature and motherhood. The topics covered bring together literary, artistic and ecological perspectives on becoming a mother, care, change and creative practice.

MOTHEROTHER is a support collective for artists with parenting and caregiving responsibilities. Through meetings, discussions, residencies, exhibitions and care-focused funding schemes, it creates spaces where artistic development and care work are considered together.

The activist-artistic collective campaigns for the visibility of artists with caring responsibilities and fights for fairer structures in the art sector. Since 2019, the collective has been organizing exhibitions and public programs on the topic of “Art & Care” in southern Germany in order to create visibility for necessary structural changes. The collective consists of the artists and activists Sascia Bailer, Anna Gohmert, Renate Liebel, Marie Lienhard and Didem Yazıcı.

Mothers Who Write is a community for established and emerging writers who are mothers. It offers mutual support, connection, resources and writing formats to highlight how writing and motherhood are intertwined realities of life and work.

Mothersuckers is an artistic project by Eve Dent and Zoë Gingell. It emerged from personal and artistic responses to pregnancy, motherhood and the maternal as a way of being in the world and in relation to artistic practice.

MOTHRA is an artist-parent project in Toronto that involves children in artistic working processes and residency programmes. The initiative aims not to separate artistic practice from childcare, but to intertwine the two, thereby challenging isolation, exclusion and rigid notions of professional art production.

MUTHA Magazine is an online magazine for mothers, MUTHAs and other parents. It publishes essays, interviews, comics and literary contributions about real, often alternative or uncomfortable perspectives on parenting, bodies, politics, care and everyday life.

This initiative builds on the 2018 publication Nicht nur Mütter waren schwanger – Unheard Perspectives on the Supposedly Most Natural Thing in the World, the first German-language volume to link personal accounts of pregnancy and reproductive justice with political structures. It centers experiences beyond cis-heteronormative norms—such as queer and lesbian family models, trans pregnancies, miscarriages, abortions, and reproductive technologies.

The online platform expands the project with new contributions, artistic works, and critical questions—addressing, for example, the temporalities of pregnancy and parenthood, changing legal landscapes, and the effects of current crises on reproductive choices. The site features personal narratives, essays, audio pieces, and more.

Other Writers Need to Concentrate makes the complex connections between authorship and parenthood visible. Through blog posts, digital readings, and networking activities, the association fosters exchange, documents working conditions, and raises awareness of the needs of writing parents.

Outside In is not a specific artist-parent initiative, but a UK-based charity for artists who face barriers in the arts sector due to health issues, disability, social circumstances or isolation. The organisation provides platforms, artist development opportunities, exhibitions and training.

PAAL is a US-wide community, resource platform and advocacy organization for people with caregiving responsibilities in performing arts and media. It develops best-practice models, grant programs, childcare grants and institutional standards for more family-friendly working conditions.

PiPA is committed to creating a performing arts sector where care and career can go hand in hand. The organisation works with employers, develops resources, research, toolkits and industry standards, and supports parents and carers in staying in the profession.

Pen Parentis is a literary non-profit organization for writers who are parents. Through salons, resources, networking and programs, it supports authors in staying on their creative path after starting a family and continuing to take their writing practice seriously.

Performance and the Maternal was an AHRC-funded research project carried out by the University of South Wales and Edge Hill University. It explored how maternal experiences, feminist ethics and performance intersect, and remains available as an archive and resource for research and artistic practice.

POST is a collective of photographers who are also mothers. It was formed during the 2021 lockdown as a means of mutual support amidst the challenges of home schooling, childbirth, family life and artistic practice, and now operates as a network for exchange, visibility and photographic practice.

Procreate Project is a London-based arts organisation that has been working since 2013 to bring about systemic change and equality for artists who are mothers or primary carers. The organisation develops platforms, awards, studio spaces, programmes and visibility initiatives for care-oriented art practice.

The collective sees it as essential to redefine public spaces—considering their role in shaping our social and communal behavior—and to reflect on our own position within these dynamics. This is why Radical Care Lab engages with the question: “What is your radical act of care?”

The collective initiates artistic interventions, discussions, and workshops to reclaim space for care in public environments. Their practice operates at the intersection of feminism, accessibility, wellbeing, and intersectionality.

Raising Films supports, promotes and advocates for parents and caregivers in the UK screen sector. The organization combines research, campaigns, resources and practical solutions to prevent talent loss and establish more family-friendly working practices in film, television and related fields.

The platform aims to empower dancers to embrace the transformation that parenthood brings to professional identity.

Through engagement with the dance community, re_dance provides a supportive space for collecting ideas, developing solutions for working methods and structures, and responding to individual needs.

re_dance carries out ongoing research and organizes exchanges to explore different perspectives on this important topic.

Spilt Milk Gallery CIC was an Edinburgh-based social art organisation dedicated to supporting artists who identify as mothers. It promoted visibility, exhibitions, workshops and community projects centred on motherhood, art and social participation; its Instagram account is marked as being in an archive phase from 2018 to 2025.

With its Mothership Studio in Birmingham, Stryx is developing a creative workspace with integrated, innovative childcare facilities. The model supports mothers and primary carers in balancing artistic practice, community life, studio work and family life under improved structural conditions.

Through local, regional and international projects, the foundation supports artists and cultural professionals by helping them develop a sustainable career in the cultural and creative field.

Their projects are carefully curated and tailored to answer the needs of artists today, whether they are recent graduates, juggling different commitments, parent artists, or, more generally, emerging artists.

‘The Mothers’ is an online archive of stories and experiences from mothers of all ages with children of all ages. The project collects texts, images, videos and personal accounts, creating a non-judgemental space for honest perspectives on motherhood.

The Mothership Project is an Irish network for artists and creative professionals with children. It supports the development of artistic practice, organises talks, workshops, podcasts and discussion forums, and advocates for a more inclusive art world for parents.

WAM is a network by and for women* in culture and media; it raises the profile of women* in these fields, empowers them through mentoring, exchange, and professional development, advocates for a new work culture and better working conditions for women* in culture and media, supports women* in leadership roles and on their path to such positions, embodies and promotes volunteerism at both the local and national levels, and fosters a sense of community, solidarity, and diversity. In doing so, WAM also addresses the intersections of gender justice and care work across various formats.

The initiative reviews the family-friendliness and structural design of funding programs in Saxony-Anhalt and engages in dialogue with funders and decision-makers about adapting calls for proposals and implementation conditions.

Through various activities such as talks, workshops, and exhibitions, the initiative brings these issues into the public sphere.
Werk & Wippe is young, activist, and open to everyone seeking exchange and wanting to get involved.

Woman Up! is a podcast that emerged from the Desperate Artwives community. It features conversations with artists, academics, activists, midwives, care workers and other mothers, and aims to serve as an accessible archive of voices that challenge norms surrounding motherhood, care and art.