BRC Autumn Pro­gramme 2025 will intro­duce you to the col­lec­tion and facil­i­tate a dia­logue between you, your prac­tice, this year’s themes and the art­works. The course is led by artist and BRC Cura­tor, Helen Knowles and artist Dr. Leni Dothan.

Four-Week Course (Online):
Dates: Wednes­days, 7:00 PM – 9:30 PM BST Novem­ber 19,26, Decem­ber 3, 10. & Sat­ur­day, Dec 6, 2:00 PM – 5:00 PM BST.
All lec­tures, work­shops, and dis­cus­sions will take place online.
Cost: 550GBP per per­son 400GBP Con­ces­sion Rate.
A 100GBP deposit is required to secure a place for both courses.

BRC_Autumn pro­gram

The course will empow­er you to artic­u­late your own prac­tice and respons­es to the col­lec­tion in a sup­port­ive envi­ron­ment whilst explor­ing crit­i­cal per­spec­tives in the field of birth.

Mid­wives, aca­d­e­mics, cura­tors, artists, medics, health pro­fes­sion­als, art his­to­ri­ans, pol­i­cy advi­sors and the gen­er­al pub­lic inter­est­ed in child­birth through the lens of art, are all wel­come. As a par­tic­i­pant, you will enter the course with your own skill set and fin­ish, with bespoke visu­al, tex­tu­al, audi­to­ry, pho­to­graph­ic, filmic and/or per­for­ma­tive mate­r­i­al, to be used there­after in your own future work.

Work­shops include explor­ing the aes­thet­ic, eth­i­cal, polit­i­cal and visu­al dis­cours­es of birth via text, film, and per­for­mance. Addi­tion­al­ly, this year, we present a unique oppor­tu­ni­ty to engage with a curat­ed selec­tion of works from the col­lec­tion that are not ordi­nar­i­ly acces­si­ble to the pub­lic. In a ded­i­cat­ed online space these pieces will enrich par­tic­i­pants’ engage­ment of the autumn programme’s themes.

Through lec­tures by lead­ing artists in the field, we will intro­duce dif­fer­ent per­spec­tives to ini­ti­ate in-depth discussions.
Themes include:
• Nav­i­gat­ing mor­tal­i­ty – from preterm birth to post-partum
• Artis­tic respons­es to preterm birth.
• How the col­lec­tion informs and unpacks dif­fer­ent per­spec­tives in mid­wifery, med­i­cine and edu­ca­tion, and its poten­tial to improve prac­tice and policy.
• The Collection’s impact on fem­i­nist art prac­tices and the reha­bil­i­ta­tion of visu­al dis­cours­es of birth into art history.
• Cen­sor­ship of art­works on birth, insti­tu­tion­al respons­es, ethics and the law
2025 speak­ers include: Grisel­da Pol­lock (online keynote), Court­ney Con­rad, Andrea Kho­ra, Helen Knowles and Leni Dothan, with more announced soon.

There is one bur­sary place available.

To book your place or for more infor­ma­tion, vis­it the Sum­mer School page on the Birth Rites Col­lec­tion web­site: https://www.birthritescollection.org.uk/autumn-program or email helen@birthrites.org.uk

Perma­link

Work­shop „Toward an Inter­dis­ci­pli­nary Approach to the His­to­ry of Med­ical Anthropology”
Fri­day, Novem­ber 28
MSH Paris-Nord (France)
9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.

The Zoom link is avail­able in the program.

Perma­link

On the night of 2–3 Decem­ber 1984, a leak from the Union Car­bide pes­ti­cide plant in the cen­tral Indi­an city of Bhopal released over forty tonnes of methyl iso­cyanate gas, expos­ing more than half a mil­lion peo­ple to one of the dead­liest indus­tri­al dis­as­ters in record­ed his­to­ry. More than thir­ty thou­sand lives have been lost since then, and over four decades lat­er, over 600,000 sur­vivors con­tin­ue to live with chron­ic ill­ness­es and inter­gen­er­a­tional health effects caused by tox­ic expo­sure. The Bhopal Gas Tragedy stands as a defin­ing event in the his­to­ry of indus­tri­al moder­ni­ty, reveal­ing the vio­lent entan­gle­ments of colo­nial cap­i­tal­ism, envi­ron­men­tal racism, and cor­po­rate impuni­ty that con­tin­ue to shape the glob­al South.

To mark the forty-first anniver­sary of this tragedy, No More Bhopals presents a hybrid film screen­ing and dis­cus­sion, revis­it­ing the night of the gas leak and its after­math. The event will be held on 2 Decem­ber 2025 at 17:00 CEST at both the Uni­ver­si­ty of Bre­men (Graz­er Str. 2, 28359 Bre­men, Ger­many) and online.

A post-screen­ing dis­cus­sion will fol­low with Dr. Sati­nath Saran­gi, Founder and Direc­tor of the Samb­ha­vana Trust Clin­ic in Bhopal, guid­ed by Yash Gup­ta, a sec­ond-gen­er­a­tion sur­vivor of the event. Dr. Saran­gi, fond­ly known as Sathyu, has been one of the most promi­nent fig­ures in the ongo­ing strug­gle for jus­tice in Bhopal and has spent over four decades pro­vid­ing free med­ical care, reha­bil­i­ta­tion, and research-based advo­ca­cy for sur­vivors. His work has been cen­tral to mobil­is­ing grass­roots net­works for health rights, envi­ron­men­tal safe­ty, and cor­po­rate account­abil­i­ty in India and beyond.

For those wish­ing to attend online, please write to ygupta@uni-bremen.de to receive the link.

The event is organ­ised in col­lab­o­ra­tion with RTG2686: Con­tra­dic­tion Stud­ies (Uni­ver­si­ty of Bre­men), the Anti­colo­nial Cineclub (Uni­ver­si­ty of Mün­ster), and the Samb­ha­vana Trust Clin­ic (Bhopal).

Togeth­er, we remem­ber those lost, stand with those still fight­ing for jus­tice, and affirm the call: No More Bhopals.

No More Bhopals

Perma­link