“In Our Hands Theatre is an idea for a future company made up of three (new) mothers who all started working to support each other following a Mother Who Make meeting in Bristol. We started by meeting weekly at someone’s house to look after each other’s babies in another room while we did personal work. This led to serious discussions and then writing an Arts Council England application for ‘Baba’s Song’, which was successful! During these meet ups, we talked about some of the challenges we faced with having a small child and wanting to continue working in theatre. The main challenges we face are childcare, touring and rehearsal timings, and how to manage making a high quality, professional show  while knowing that there is potential for needing to stop abruptly to nurture a sick child (so many illnesses in the first year!).

In addition to creating ‘Baba’s Song’ our funding includes; two workshops, one for Mothers Who Make in Bristol ‘Pathways for Creative Mums’ on 18 July 2018; a contingency for dealing with unexpected parenting related emergency (ill child); and research into making touring more accessible for mothers and families – starting with conversations with those venues we’ve already booked with or have supported us so far. 

I ignored my creative side and became stuck for years working office jobs in order to ground myself in the United Kingdom. I was finding myself unable to connect to the creative world in the way I was so desperate to. It was through having my son and the networks I connected with through Mothers Who Make meetings that I found the courage and strength to ‘fuck it’ and take the leap of faith! Out of the sequential meetups with Jannah and Kim (and other mums), they Kim and Jannah asked me to be the creative producer and supported me in taking the bold decision to leave my office job and focus fully on building up work as a freelance producer/theatre maker. I later met another woman at MWM who I am now collaborating with to start “The Cloud Factory” to teach physical theatre to children, teenagers and adult, with a focus on adults who may have been a bit like me, stuck creatively and/or not wanting to make a career in theatre, but are interested in the therapeutic, life improving quality theatres skills have to offer.”