At first glance, it’s a classic image of motherhood, a contemporary take on the Madonna and child scenes that recur throughout Western art. Picked out in fabric and paint, a woman, eyes closed in contentment, embraces her baby. Yet at the heart of the picture, a void. The child, removed.
It’s a powerful statement at the heart of “A Story of Hope”, an exhibition which opens in Newcastle Cathedral on 6 March. The show highlights art by a group of women coming to terms with their own experiences of complex motherhood and child removal, connected by work from Stockton-based artist Harriet Mee. It’s the culmination of six months of workshops set up by Her Circle, an organisation dedicated to supporting women who experience the challenges of complex motherhood which increase their risk of child removal, and Newcastle City Council.
Sharing stories
Harriet’s experience in those workshops was very much that people wanted to share their stories – and successes – despite sometimes heartbreaking adversity.
“These women have gone through so much – trauma, healing, therapy – but they want to show that it really is possible to turn lives around,” she said. “Some of them got their children back.”
“One woman in our group had her children removed twice in very different circumstances. But now she’s fully free of addiction and has a stable home and she is on that journey to heal her relationship with her daughter.
“She’s doing all sorts; she’s turned everything around. It’s incredible. These women are really inspiring.”
Amy van Zyl, CEO of Her Circle, was also keen to celebrate the power of this project.
“It’s just been the most joyful thing,” she said. “A really beautiful year of women expressing themselves. The event is about showing people what works. The national picture is harrowing but there are solutions to be found in the power of healthy community support. We can give people a fighting chance,”
The artwork
Speaking about the artwork, Harriet is excited by what the women from the workshops have produced. Although few of them had any experience of producing art other than school lessons, many of the women have been inspired by the project. As well as three large-scale works from a trio of participants who were involved from start to finish, there is a wealth of sketches and smaller works from more of the women.
“There are three women who came often enough to make big pieces of work,” Harriet said. “We had a very broad theme of sisterhood and feminism, which they interpreted in quite different ways.
“One of them is really keen to do a self portrait, which is enormous for her when she’s never painted anything before. Another is doing something huge with fabric, we’ll just let her go wild and it’s going to look great!
“A third lady is looking at a more symbolic piece based on a tree, she wanted that symbolism rather than more photographic art. Those will be three very different and very exciting major artworks on display.”
The message
While the work is diverse, Harriet was clear that the message in her own work had to be unambiguous.
“It’s important to [Her Circle] that we present a straightforward message,” she said. “It smacks you in the face when you come and see the work.
“The connection with the children is still there, but they don’t have their children anymore. It has to hit home, emotionally.”
But alongside that shattering emotion, there is also resilience and hope.
“These are people working hard to rebuild their lives,” Harriet added. “We wanted a celebration of everything that these women have achieved, despite everything they’ve been through.
“This is the kind of work I want to do as an artist. I want to engage with issues that are important.”
Child removal
And Britain’s record on child removal, although rarely discussed, is a subject worthy of greater attention. From the outside, it’s easy to assume that it is basically protecting children, and therefore an entirely sensible last resort.
But the reality is different. Britain takes more children into care – that is, removes more children from their biological parents – than any other country in Europe. At present, that affects about 84,000 kids; the number is soon expected to reach 100,000. The Children’s Act makes it clear that the first responsibility is to try to keep children in their families, using removal into care as a final failsafe if this proves impossible. Yet ever-declining funding for local government makes family support prohibitively expensive. The last resort becomes the first in a process likened to “factory farming”.
At Her Circle, Amy is a tireless advocate for change in a broken system. As well as providing vital hands-on support for mothers at risk of child removal, she is also regularly involving in lobbying parliament for reform of a system that she believes if failing Britain’s children.
Contrasts with other countries are striking. “If you look at a country like Norway, there are just four episodes of birth removal a year,” Amy said. “These are extreme cases or real physical or mental illness that would prevent a mother from being able to care for her children.”
Yet far from protecting at-risk children, removal causes lasting problems for youngsters taken into care.
“Being raised in care is the number one indicator for whether you will go on and have children removed from your care,” Amy added. “The state becomes a corporate parent of the child, fails to instil into that child whatever is needed to avoid having their own children removed, and then take no responsibility whatsoever.
“If the state was a woman, it would be stigmatized in every tabloid newspaper for its behaviour.”
Can this change? Amy believes it can and it must – starting with independent advocacy for all families involved with children’s social services.
“It would give them the opportunity to understand the risk that they face,” she said. “One of the biggest issues is that families believe that social services are there to serve and support. They make disclosures which are then weaponised against them.
“Because women access us anonymously, services like ours help them to access the support they need to prevent risk to their children, without increasing the danger of having their children removed.
“It’s imperative that we understand how people need the option of anonymous support services. Every time a woman accesses rehab or counselling she’s asked if she has children, and it’s so they can safeguard children by calling social services to report the mother’s vulnerability as a potential risk to the child. Yet men are not asked about any of this and, whatever their condition, it’s assumed to be irrelevant to the child because that is the mother’s responsibility. It’s not OK to do that to people and it’s really counterintuitive.”
Group support and healing
Then comes a bigger picture: group support and healing.
“Nobody gets well on their own,” Amy added. “The women who get well with us have a posseof really healthy women around them. It simulates a healthy family around them which they often don’t have at home. That’s what the art project wanted to look at those themes; to really explore them so the women could see and feel them, then present them outwardly.”
Photos by Andy Potts
A Story of Hope Women’s Art Display by her Circle and Harriet Mee opens with a special event at Newcastle Cathedral on 6 March. The afternoon presentation will feature contributions from several of the women artists from the project, as well as from Amy and Harriet. The exhibition, which features a range of artwork as well as written word contributions, runs 10-31 March.
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