Event Details

From Insight to Action series. Dr Stella Bolaki will explore how creative practice and artists’ books can serve as research method and testimony in work with mothers affected by child removal offering insights into lived experience and compassionate practice across child and family justice

From Insight to Action: Bridging Research and Practice for Children and Families Artists’ Books as Method and Testimony: Creative Practice in Researching Maternal Adoption Loss

The Centre for Child and Family Justice Research (CfJ) warmly invites you to the next session in our From Insight to Action online series, which brings research, practice and lived experience into dialogue to support thoughtful and informed work with children and families.

We are pleased to welcome Dr Stella Bolaki Reader in American Literature and Medical Humanities and Co-Director of the Centre for Health and Medical Humanities, (Kent University).

This session engages with one of the most complex and emotionally charged areas of children and families practice: maternal adoption loss following the removal of children through state intervention. It offers a rare opportunity to consider how creative and participatory approaches can deepen understanding of mothers’ experiences and open space for more reflective, humane and ethically attuned responses across research, policy and frontline practice.

Drawing on participatory workshops in which mothers created artist’s books to explore and communicate their lived experiences, Dr Bolaki will reflect on the expressive, connective and reparative potential of creative practice. The session will explore what becomes visible when experiences of loss and resilience are communicated through material, visual and narrative forms, and how these insights can inform professional judgement, policy thinking and public understanding.

For researchers, the talk offers a compelling example of creative methodology and participatory knowledge production. For practitioners and those working within legal and policy contexts, it provides a valuable opportunity to engage with lived experience in ways that can support more reflective and relational practice.

The presentation is based on the collaborative project The Artist’s Book: Mothers’ Experiences of Adoption, developed with Dr Samantha Davey (University of Essex).

We very much hope you can join us for what promises to be a rich and important conversation.