Motherhood in Climate Crisis

The story so far

As of December 2022, this project has completed its pilot phase and the group are ready to share their story. What follows is a breakdown of their journey including the bumps they navigated along the way. It culminates in the story performances recorded on the day. 

For a short taste, here is the project summary video [4:41]:

Short on time?

The origin

The overlap of the two issues of climate crisis and motherhood had been simmering away with Sophia for a number of years as her professional work invited her to consider the emotional weight of society’s impact. An unpopular disquiet was brewing: driven by the need to be useful in what the UN and international scientists call the challenge for our generation, is having children the most useful act?

What Sophia had noticed was that whenever she was feeling courageous enough to raise the topic with others, people always had something to say. Conversations about the climate crisis and as a consequence questioning motherhood emerged from an online community of women of which Sophia is part. They hosted a dedicated online event, with clear boundaries. Women were invited to speak on their own experience, rather than share opinions on the ethics of other’s choices. In particular, women were reminded that a populationist rhetoric, which can veer quickly into eco-facism would not be welcome in the space. The women had 5 minutes to share their story, whilst the group bore witness to these stories. Despite the limitations of screens the emotion was palpable. One participant relayed that they no longer felt as alone around this issue. Sophia realised that if a safe enough space could be created, giving people permission to tell their story, the heart could be put back into this type of climate conversation.

The idea for the project emerged: is there a way to do this with strangers that is safe? How might personal testimonies on this topic shed a very real and emotional light on the climate crisis, in a way that talk of degrees centigrade and parts per million does not? How might the media pitfall of pitching one woman against another be avoided? How might there be gentle provocation? How might the privilege inherently embedded in choice be acknowledged, and  the validity of women’s anguish be honoured?In the media, these conversations were getting more attention, from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez validating people questioning parenthood, to Naomi Klein sharing it, to data from 10000 young people, with four in ten saying they were worried about having children.

The team building

Sophia shared the concept with Celia Turley, a creative producer of socially engaged arts projects, who she had met previously when they were both involved in organising for a Green New Deal in Bristol.

Together Celia and Sophia started to explore how to bring the project to life. Within weeks, Necessity came on board: the project’s first funder. With an enabling and progressive agenda that seeks to support projects building solidarity and collaboration on themes such as creative communities and environmental justice, Necessity provided the funds and free rein that was needed to create a project trying to do things differently. Funders like this are few and far between and the project leaders are really grateful to them. Their early backing was instrumental to the project’s unfolding.

Celia started reaching out and bringing a team together. Sabba Khan came on board to bring the project to life visually. A pitch deck was built, arts funding applications completed, and the Climate Psychology Alliance came on board as care partners.

/col

Celia knew that a sensitive and thoughtful creative practitioner, attuned to the complex politics of the issue and committed to telling women’s stories, would be key to the success of the project. She spent a joyful few weeks talking to a range of interesting and skilled theatre makers, but when she met Liz Mytton, she knew she was the person who would be able to bring something special to the project.

Also key to the project was centring care, so Jo McAndrews was brought in as therapeutic facilitator. All the team members were committed to holding a core value of care, but having someone who brought therapeutic experience to the team and who held care as the main focus of their role, meant that it would be integrated throughout.

Celia also secured additional funds from Brigstow Institute and from Bristol University. Maria Fannin, a human geographer and researcher, joined the project team. 

Whilst Celia was actively recruiting and fundraising, other team members were also bringing together more people who were willing the project forward in all sorts of ways. Women with an existing platform came on board as champions, including Dr Britt Wray, Blythe Pepino, and Jen Gale.

With £17k now raised, plus £5k contribution from With Many Roots, Sophia’s own organisation, the project team decided to run a pilot, even though the original fundraising target had not been reached. This started in March 2022, with the first meeting of the project team face to face.

Liz and Jo demonstrated how they work with some taster sessions in a small classroom in the Geography department at the University of Bristol. There was much laughter and many tears as team members opened up about the topic they were going to be asking their workshop participants to do. 

Meeting in person also allowed conversations highlighting differences in expectations. With each team member holding a part of the process and bringing in their years of experience, they realised there were some mis-matches in approaches that needed to be addressed. There was a strong desire to speak to the global nature of women’s decisions on motherhood being impacted by climate change, and for building international connections and sharing women’s stories with communities across the world – potentially opening up a vital cross-cultural conversation. 

At the same time, other members felt that in attending to an emotionally sensitive topic, and after more than a year of interactions mediated by technology during COVID, creating a safe container for in-person interaction had powerful potential. Trust is the essential underpinning to collaboration, and the immediacy of an intimate space would help to build the bonds required to support the women’s collective creativity.  It was hoped that a relational, artistic practice rooted in a shared geography would more easily facilitate the possibility of further collaboration, friendship and climate action beyond the limits of the project.

Placing an emphasis on a big public moment might create a barrier to women whose voices are often marginalised, and who may have to overcome larger obstacles to contribute to the conversation in the first place.

The recruitment

The move from the conceptual to the practical was rapid. With a venue and dates secured, what followed was hectic activity to try to reach as many people and networks in the Bristol area. Liz was featured on Ujima radio, and Sophia was featured in a dedicated episode for the Climate Psychology Alliance podcast. Community groups, women’s centres, climate organising conferences and many other places were visited to try and raise awareness of the project. 

A public session ran in May 2022, joined by 8 women, some travelling from as far as London. The team learned that in some circles the project circulated many times, but in others outreach had been less successful.

Liz and Jo ran a powerful session, with a mix of theatre-filled activities, reflective individual exercises, and group discussion. The eight women experienced a sample of what the 5-week process might be like. There was a range of different experiences of motherhood: some were mothers already; others were ambivalent, or not wanting to bring a child into the world as it is.  There was an age range from 24-37. It was a full on day.

Watch a short summary video below [30 seconds]

The Process

Because of other commitments, notably juggling motherhood and work, a few participants did not stay with the project for the rest of the journey. So 5 participants – Anna, Daniela, Ruby, Jodi, Rosanna – and Sophia – would go forward through to performance. They met online a few weeks later, with Liz encouraging them to write to different prompts, haikus, blessings, letters etc. Jo led supportive check-ins and groundings, attending to the culture of care. Despite all that life can throw, the group showed up week after week.

In between sessions, Liz was in touch with participants, developing their writing, drafting an emerging script, supporting them in telling their stories. Jo continued with the emphasis on people’s process and wellbeing, listening and offering support when they were struggling. 

A key moment was the weekend workshop on 11th/12th June: another powerful two days. In one moment, Liz had the participants shouting in their best Eastenders accent and giggling; and in the next, candidly sharing personal stories of fibroids, endometriosis, bleeding, abortions, and miscarriages. There was something special for participants about that moment. They were invited to respond to what they’d heard by holding a shape without using words. The next moment participants were giggling again as they made up sea shanty lyrics about taking down the patriarchy.

Liz’s facilitation exercises where groups of participants created tableaux on difficult topics opened up a conversation that staying purely in their heads would never have done. The observing group commented too on what they saw in the participants’ work. Even lunch breaks were a highlight: over wraps and crisps and the occasional ice lolly participants touched on lighter and sillier conversations.

Addressing the lack of diversity

From the first open rehearsal, the team were acutely aware of the lack of diversity in the group – it was a fairly homogenous cohort of mainly white, middle class women. This was not for lack of connecting and communicating with diverse women’s networks, parenting groups and community spaces across the city. However, due to the way that the project came about, the usual partnership building that would have been integral to the development of a project like this, didn’t begin with the conception of the project. The concern was it might appear that the group were speaking authoritatively on the experience of women generally, when it was clear that many women and stories were not represented. They decided that a real and dedicated effort would be required to address this, and that this iteration of the project was effectively phase one of something that would need to be revisited. 

So the project shifted to this two-phase approach of local and global. The local was a process supporting intimacy, trust-building and co-creation for those women that had already shown up to develop a performance on this in the Bristol area. This would build up to a live performance, with professional recording of a dress rehearsal.

Global was about taking these stories out to a wider audience and reaching those who might feel more isolated on this topic. Screening an online premiere with ‘talk show’ elements around it and bringing in a global audience, amplified by the project champions. Within the constraints of the project as it was, Celia and Sophia felt that a much longer time frame and relationship building phase was necessary to meaningfully address the missing voices in the room and that a more superficial engagement would be tokenism. The project team felt the need to say it like it was: the group lacked diversity, from a race and ethnicity perspective – Liz being the only woman of colour. There was also not as broad a range of motherhood perspectives as the team knew to be out there: an older woman who had decided not to have children, for example, or a mother of teenagers, or a mother who had taken the adopted route in part due to the climate crisis, or a perspective from a 19/20ish year old.

To build grassroots relationships, the team felt it needed more time to meet, listen and learn from the needs of local women’s groups; to feed diverse perspectives into the project shape; to develop partnerships based on meaningful collaboration allowing for more shared ownership of the project.  As a project that had been born from the personal experiences of a very particular demographic, it held an authenticity and self-evident truth in those communities but the team felt it was not successful in communicating the question and ideas to women with different experiences. There are rich questions to be explored in terms of how this question plays out across diverse communities, but it became clear to the team they would not do this meaningfully in this initial process. 

The seemingly impossible was finally raised by Jo: might the public performance aspect of the project be delayed? In an emergency meeting Sophia took from her car the project team gathered. They knew both the concept and the women they had convened had potential, and that their individual stories were powerful and their courage in wanting to speak out should be honoured, but still they didn’t feel they could go public on this topic as they were not a representative enough group. 

The team had made its own parameters and it could change them. They had learned something fundamental, and could now adapt. Thankfully, funders were very flexible and although the plan for the final event was a public performance, it didn’t necessarily have to happen this time. This was, after all, the first phase of the project. The team identified that it was the process that was key, not the output. 

Liz suggested participants were invited into the team’s thinking, so that began the next weekend’s meeting. Each of the project team named the issue and shared their suggested proposition. There was agreement in the room, though with a twinge of disappointment around the absence of a performance. The team worked with this and landed on the ideal situation: focus on the filming and collecting the individual stories as monologues that could then sit next to future stories from a wider range of voices. Also, an open rehearsal could take place: participants could invite a close friend or two to witness their testimonies and honour the journey they’d taken.

It seemed there was a way forward that met everyone’s needs, culminating in a different kind of performance everyone could feel proud of.

The open rehearsal

In the early evening, friends who had come to bear witness to these stories joined the group to watch an open rehearsal. They were invited into some of the warm up exercises, and the first run through, which went smoothly. The group was pleased it had decided to perform to a live audience as well as film it, and pleased also that the audience was small and very informal. It gave them the freedom to not worry about mistakes and to really enjoy sharing what they had created. An emotional experience for everyone.

The team had brought in a professional therapist to host a group debrief with participants, in order to make sure care was threaded through their experience and also to take the conversation out to a slightly wider group. While the audience shared their response to the performance in pairs, performers and team had 10 minutes or so in the foyer to celebrate and congratulate each other before they went back into the theatre to join the audience. In retrospect, they realised that they would have liked more direct feedback about the audience’s experience of the open rehearsal. There was open space for anyone to share how they felt, but performers needed more validation of the vulnerable stories they had shared. The evening finished with an informal drink and chat and it helped that the whole team would meet again the next day to hold any vulnerability or unmet needs.

The team was so pleased that everyone who was part of the project was still totally committed right to the end. Addressing a subject as enormous as this, there was every possibility that it would be too difficult for some people to stay involved. The team believes that the way they worked together to create a culture of creativity, welcome, and care helped everyone to stay involved and be willing to contribute their vulnerable stories to a larger process that held everyone.

The stories

And so, finally, the project team are ready to share the individual stories. These were recorded straight to camera.

So over to you now, the reader, thank you for taking in the context of the project. These stories are full of heart. It took courage to write and perform them and it takes courage to watch them as well. 

Each video is only a few minutes long. They are all different.

The questions

• How did watching one or more of these videos make you feel?
• Do you see yourself in any of these stories? What might you say that would be different?
• Would you share these conversations with anyone you know?
• What might your story of motherhood in a climate crisis be?

The support

• If you need one-to-one support after watching these films, please visit Climate Psychology Alliance and their support service.
• For group support CPA run Climate Cafes and a specific group for Parent/Carer Climate Circles twice a month
• The CPA have also compiled these list of resources for tackling eco-anxiety, including resources for under 18s.

We are grateful for the services the CPA provides. Please consider supporting them.

• Sophia has synthesised some of the core learnings from Britt Wray’s latest book exploring this topic Generation Dread. You might find some helpful concepts here.

Recommended books

A collaborative reading list that has been growing since the project’s inception.

Please note: these are affiliate links from Bookshop.org

Other resources

• Expectant – A genre-bending podcast about the prospect of becoming a parent during climate collapse
• Why I Hesitate to Have a Child: Eco-Anxiety and Reproduction Concerns – Business & Society

Project coverage so far

More people opting for child free – ITV News – June 2023

Motherhood in a climate crisis: Women share their anger and fear – BBC News – 19 November 2022

Motherhood in a Climate Crisis – Climate Psychology Alliance podcast – June 2022

Motherhood in a Climate Crisis – Brigstow Institute – Bristol University – March 2022

Storytelling project of our times secures £17k of funding – Future Hub – January 2022

Stay in touch

With Thanks

To our funders:

With thanks to Daphne Pleace who helped edit this piece.

Next steps

They are planning the next stage of this project, please get in touch if you would like to be involved. You can contact the project at [email protected]