Networks Networks

Location: Asia / the Asian diaspora

The project documents artistic practice, residencies, conversations and biographical connections between care, motherhood, heritage and contemporary art. It creates a mapping structure for artists whose work and lived realities are often underrepresented in global art discourses. A.M.M.A.A. connects archival work with community building and strengthens transnational visibility.

Location: Cologne, Germany

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.

Location: Global

The residency understands motherhood, care time and domestic reality not as obstacles, but as sites of artistic research and production. Artists define the time frame, structure and working methods of their residency themselves and integrate it into their existing living conditions. ARIM thereby shifts the idea of the residency and makes visible that artistic work can also emerge outside classical institutions and protected production spaces.

Location: South Africa

The initiative addresses artists who are mothers or who have experienced pregnancy, loss and related transformations. Through mentoring, visibility, exhibitions, skills development and economic empowerment structures, Art after Baby strengthens artistic continuity after significant life changes. The project connects care, bodily histories and artistic professionalization with questions of participation and economic stability.

Location: Switzerland

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.

Location: Switzerland

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.

Location: United Kingdom

The initiative connects artists, curators, cultural workers and other parents working within the arts. Through mentoring, regional groups, events and resources, it advocates for better working conditions and greater visibility for parents in the art system. Its aim is an art world in which caregiving is not treated as a private obstacle, but recognized as a structural reality.

Location: USA

Through interviews, exhibitions, retreats, publications and exchange formats, the platform makes visible how artists continue to develop their practice under the conditions of motherhood and care. It understands parenthood not as an interruption of artistic work, but as an experiential space that can shape artistic thinking. Artist/Mother creates encouragement, connection and concrete support for artists with family responsibilities.

Location: Global

The platform collects and documents artistic positions that address parenthood or work from a parental perspective. It creates visibility, discoverability and historical documentation for a field that has often been marginalized in art history. The Artist Parent Index thus functions as an archive, research tool and contribution to recognizing parenthood as an artistically relevant field of experience.

Location: United Kingdom

Babes in Arms is a collective of female artists and mothers from Hastings and St Leonards. The collective creates spaces for exchange, artistic practice and shared reflection on motherhood and art. Children are not treated as a disruption, but as part of the lived and working reality of the artists involved. Babes in Arms works toward a solidaric artistic practice that connects care, creativity and community.

Location: Global / digital

Both Artist and Mother is a digital interview and archive project by Kate Fisher. The project documents conversations and stories of women artists, especially in the field of ceramics, who connect their artistic practice with motherhood. It creates encouragement, exchange and visibility for biographies in which art and care are present at the same time. Both Artist and Mother helps situate individual experiences within a larger network of shared artistic and family realities.

Location: Germany

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.

Location: USA

The platform gathers resources, information and opportunities for exchange for artist-parents. It makes visible that the compatibility of parenthood and art is not only an individual challenge, but a structural question. Through networking and information, the Center for Parenting Artists strengthens artists who continue their creative work after or alongside starting a family.

Location: Leeds, England

The initiative offers mothers and pregnant people a supportive space for artistic practice, exchange and mutual encouragement. It connects creativity with the experiences of motherhood and creates accessible opportunities to develop one’s artistic voice. At its center is a community that does not separate care work from creative work.

Location: USA

The initiative gathers resources on family-friendly residencies, exchange formats and support structures in the arts and cultural sector. It advocates for a cultural landscape in which parenthood is recognized as part of professional practice. Cultural ReProducers connects personal experience, practical information and structural critique of an art world that often ignores care work.

Location: Berlin, Germany

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.

Location: Munich, Germany

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.

Location: Online / United Kingdom

The collective works through exhibitions, performances, conversations and digital formats. It makes visible how social expectations placed on mothers and women shape and limit artistic biographies. Through collective visibility, humor, critique and activism, Desperate Artwives creates space for alternative narratives of motherhood and artistic work.

Location: Saxony, Germany

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.

Location: Global

The project brings together photographic perspectives on motherhood, care, family, home and the body. It understands motherhood inclusively and includes experiences such as IVF, adoption, foster care, LGBTQ+ family constellations and gender-diverse perspectives. Eye Mama creates a visual archive that strengthens the gaze of mothers and caregivers as an artistic and documentary perspective in its own right.

Location: Berlin, Germany

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.

Location: Switzerland

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.

Location: online / Berlin, Germany

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.

Location: United Kingdom

The project addresses isolation, stigma and the often hidden work of mothers. Through participatory art, film and public presentations, it gives visibility and support especially to migrant or isolated mothers. The artistic work opens a space in which personal experiences of motherhood are connected to broader questions of belonging, visibility and support.

Location: United Kingdom

The guidelines provide concrete recommendations for residencies, exhibitions, institutions and funding programs. They show how communication, travel conditions, scheduling, breastfeeding and childcare situations, as well as fee and production structures, can be made more inclusive. Their aim is to prevent artist-parents from being excluded from the art world through avoidable institutional barriers.

Location: Australia

The magazine brings together artistic, photographic and narrative perspectives on mothering, creative work and identity. It opens a space for voices and images that do not simplify motherhood, but make it visible as a complex experience of body, care, everyday life and artistic expression. HOWL Magazine contributes to a cultural narrative in which motherhood is taken seriously as a creative and social field.

Location: United Kingdom

The initiative connects artistic practice with intersectional feminism and creates spaces for voices that are often underrepresented in the arts and cultural sector. Through exhibitions, talks, symposia and workshops, INFEMS promotes participation, self-empowerment and critical dialogue. Its focus lies on how art can function as a tool for representation, solidarity and social change.

Location: France

The initiative understands care not only as an individual act, but as a social and institutional practice. Through formats of exchange, artistic projects and collective thinking, it explores new forms of solidarity, interdependence, healing and sustainable collaboration. Its focus lies on how art and cultural institutions can become more just, caring and future-oriented.

Location: Munich, Germany

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.

Location: Heidelberg, Germany

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.

Location: Berlin, Germany

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

Location: Augsburg, Germany

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.

Location: Global / online

The magazine publishes poetry, prose, essays, reviews and reflections on the physical, psychological, intellectual and spiritual experiences of mothering. It understands motherhood as a complex literary subject that connects personal, political and aesthetic dimensions. Literary Mama offers writers a space in which parenthood appears as a serious starting point for literary work.

Location: United Kingdom

Based on the available information, the collective understands itself as a network for artists who are parents or caregivers. Its focus lies on exchange, mutual support, visibility and shared creative formats. As no fully reliable website could be identified, this entry should be checked again before publication.

Location: United Kingdom / global

The initiative combines peer support, local hubs, mentoring, events and artistic opportunities. It is aimed at people who do not want to separate their creative and caring identities. M/Others Who Make creates spaces in which motherhood, parenthood and care are recognized not as interruptions, but as part of creative practice.

Location: Freiburg, Germany

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.

Location: Online and London, United Kingdom

MAMSIE stands for Mapping Maternal Subjectivities, Identities and Ethics and is closely associated with the journal Studies in the Maternal.

The initiative connects cultural, feminist and artistic perspectives on the maternal. Through the journal Studies in the Maternal, it brings together scholarly and artistic contributions that examine motherhood as a complex social, political and aesthetic field. MAMSIE thereby offers an important theoretical reference point for debates on care, bodies, identity and social responsibility.

Location: Todmorden, England

The initiative supports artists working with the maternal through publications, visibility and curatorial formats. It understands motherhood not as a marginal topic, but as an artistic and social field of inquiry in its own right. Maternal Art helps make the work of mother-artists more visible and situates it within broader discourses.

Location: Berlin, Germany

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.

Location: United Kingdom & USA

The initiative provides writing, drawing and reflection exercises and works with group formats that support wellbeing and exchange. Maternal Journal understands creative practice as a way to make experiences of motherhood, parenthood and care visible and processable. The project connects artistic methods with accessible support and community building.

Location: Warsaw, Poland

The group makes visible the working and living realities of women artists with children and develops formats that think artistic practice and motherhood together. These include exchange, visibility and residency models adapted to family circumstances. At its core is the question of how artists with care responsibilities can access space, time and support for their work.

Location: Hamburg, Germany

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.

Location: Berlin, Germany

MOMCORE works with songs, workshops and formats for parents, especially mothers, and makes experiences of parenthood visible through music. With humorous, direct and everyday lyrics, the project translates mental load, exhaustion, questions of identity and care work into musical forms. MOMCORE shows that music about parenthood does not have to be softened or sentimental, but can sound loud, funny, critical and empowering.

Location: Global

The project gathers reflections on how artists with children set priorities, organize support and continue their creative work under the conditions of parenthood.

Location: London, England

The prize is aimed at visual artists who identify as women or non-binary and whose artistic careers are shaped by motherhood or care work. It creates visibility, exhibition opportunities and recognition for work that is often overlooked in the mainstream art world. The Mother Art Prize understands care not as a limitation to artistic professionalism, but as an important context of artistic production.

Location: USA

The initiative creates safe meeting spaces in which artists explore the connections between body, identity, art, play and mutual support. It strengthens the visibility of mother+artists and responds to the isolation often experienced by artists with care responsibilities through communal formats. At its center is the recognition of motherhood as an experience that shapes and expands artistic practice.

Location: London, England

Mother House Studios is a studio model initiated by Procreate Project that incorporates childcare.
The project creates affordable and child-friendly workspaces for artists with care responsibilities. Rather than strictly separating art production from family life, it organizes studio work, childcare, exchange and community within one shared model. Mother House Studios responds to a central structural barrier in the art world: the lack of workspaces compatible with parenthood.

Location: United Kingdom

The initiative creates spaces for dialogue, exchange and mutual support among creative mothers. It asks how artistic practice can continue under the conditions of care work, limited time and family responsibility. The apparent limitations of motherhood are not only understood as a problem, but also as a starting point for new ways of working.

Location: Global

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.

Location: Bristol, United Kingdom

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.

Location: Newcastle, United Kingdom

The collective creates supportive spaces for artistic development, exchange and visibility. Through meetings, conversations, residencies, exhibitions and care-oriented support formats, it works to ensure that artists with children or other caregiving responsibilities are not excluded from professional contexts. MOTHEROTHER understands care as part of artistic biography and as a basis for new forms of solidarity.

Location: Stuttgart / Baden-Wuerttemberg, Germany

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.

Location: United Kingdom

The initiative supports writers in continuing their writing practice alongside or through motherhood. It creates exchange, resources and connecting formats for people who combine writing and parenthood. Mothers Who Write makes clear that literary work and care responsibilities do not have to be set against each other.

Location: United Kingdom

Mothersuckers is an artistic project by Eve Dent and Zoë Gingell. It emerged from artistic and personal engagements with pregnancy, motherhood and the maternal. It asks how these experiences transform perception, bodies, relationships and artistic production.

Location: Toronto, Canada

The initiative develops residency and exchange formats in which children are not excluded, but considered part of the artistic working process. In doing so, MOTHRA challenges rigid ideas of professional art-making that often render care responsibilities invisible. The project creates spaces in which parenthood, artistic work and community can productively intersect.

Location: Berlin, Germany

The initiative was founded out of the experiences of working parents in the music industry and develops offers that better connect family life, creative work and professional development. These include family-friendly activities, networking, counselling, workshops and formats that raise awareness of mental load, stress management and structural barriers. Music Family Hub makes visible that compatibility in the music industry is not only a private organizational challenge, but requires changed working conditions, solidary networks and concrete support structures.

Location: USA

Das Magazin veröffentlicht Essays, Interviews, Comics und literarische Beiträge über reale, oft alternative oder unbequeme Perspektiven auf Elternschaft. Es behandelt Themen wie Körper, Politik, Care, Alltag, Familie und reproduktive Selbstbestimmung. MUTHA schafft damit einen Raum für Erzählungen, die jenseits idealisierter Vorstellungen von Mutterschaft liegen.

Location: Berlin, Germany

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.

Location: Germany

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.

Location: United Kingdom

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. Through platforms, exhibitions, artist development and training, Outside In creates opportunities for visibility and participation. In the context of care and parenthood, the initiative is particularly relevant as an example of barrier-aware structural work.

Location: USA

The organization develops resources, best-practice models, funding programs and institutional standards for more family-friendly working conditions. It supports artists, producers and institutions in understanding care responsibilities not as an exception, but as a plannable part of professional work. PAAL works toward structural change in sectors often shaped by flexible, precarious and care-unfriendly working practices.

Location: United Kingdom

The organization works with institutions, employers and industry partners to establish more family-friendly structures in the performing arts sector. It develops research, toolkits, recommendations and programs that take care responsibilities seriously as a structural factor. Its aim is to prevent talent loss and enable professional continuity despite parenthood or caregiving.

Location: USA

he organization supports authors in staying on their creative path after starting a family. Through salons, resources, networking and programs, Pen Parentis creates spaces in which writing and parenthood are considered together. The initiative advocates for literary careers not to be interrupted or made invisible by care responsibilities.

Location: Cardiff, Wales

The project examined how motherhood and maternal perspectives operate within performance, theory and artistic research. It connected scholarly analysis with artistic practice and raised questions around bodies, care, representation and feminist responsibility. Today, the project is particularly relevant as an archive and resource for further research and artistic engagement.

Location: Online / United Kingdom

The collective emerged during the 2021 lockdown from a need for exchange and mutual support during a time when artistic work, homeschooling, family life and care were especially closely intertwined. POST creates visibility for photographic practice shaped by motherhood and caregiving. At the same time, the collective offers a space in which artistic development and parenthood are thought together.

Location: London, England

The organization works toward structural change and greater equality in the art field. It develops platforms, prizes, studios, programs and exhibition formats that make care work visible as part of artistic practice. Procreate Project responds to forms of exclusion that often push artists with children out of professional contexts.

Location: Germany

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.

Location: Worldwide / Film sector with strong UK ties

The organization combines research, campaigns, resources and practical solutions to establish more family-friendly working practices in film, television and related fields. It makes visible how strongly care responsibilities can affect careers in the screen sector and works against talent loss caused by incompatible working structures. Raising Films therefore contributes to structural change in an industry often shaped by long working hours, mobility and precarity.

Location: Frankfurt/Main, Germany

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.

Location: USA

The collective strengthens the voices of Indigenous women and women of color and works against reproductive oppression. Its focus lies on human rights, self-determination, reproductive justice and social change. Although SisterSong is not specifically an artist-parent initiative, its work is fundamentally relevant to questions of motherhood, body politics, care and social justice.

Location: Edinburgh, Schottland

The initiative supported mother-artists through exhibitions, workshops, community projects and visibility formats. It connected artistic practice with social participation and asked how motherhood can be represented and supported within the art world. Based on the available information, Spilt Milk now appears to function more as an archive or completed project; its Instagram account is marked as being in an archive phase from 2018 to 2025.

Location: United Kingdom

The project combines studio work, community and radical childcare within one shared space. It is aimed at mothers and primary caregivers who often face barriers in reconciling working time, childcare and professional presence in the art world. Mothership Studio thus tests a concrete infrastructure for more family-friendly artistic production.

Location: Maastricht, Netherlands / Munich, Germany

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.

Location: United Kingdom

‘The Mothers’ is an online archive of stories and experiences from mothers of all ages with children of all ages. The project gathers texts, images, videos and narratives by mothers of different ages and with different family biographies. It creates a non-judgmental space for honest, polyphonic perspectives on motherhood. In doing so, it makes visible experiences that are often simplified or excluded from public images of mothering.

Location: Ireland

The initiative supports artist-parents through exchange, workshops, conversations, podcasts and shared resources. It makes visible how parenthood shapes artistic practice and advocates for an art world in which care responsibilities do not lead to exclusion. Its focus is on strengthening artists who continue to develop their creative work within the realities of family life and caregiving.

Location: Germany

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.

Location: Halle/Saale, Germany

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.

Location: United Kingdom

Emerging from the context of Desperate Artwives, the podcast brings together conversations with artists, academics, activists, midwives and other voices around M/otherhood. The conversations question normative ideas of motherhood, care and creative work. Woman Up! functions as an accessible archive of experience, knowledge and critical perspectives.