“I am a visual artist who makes work about the Maternal Subject. I am currently producing Maternal Art Magazine (MAM), a creative response by 20 artists to the COVID-19 crisis and have set up Maternal Art, a project that seeks to connect and provide critical, professional and emotional support for artist / mothers from around the world. In Lockdown, honest answer - I’ve been cooking, cuddling cats, sleeping in a tent in the garden and trying to be creative and work and stay sane during the crisis...”

“I started creating reusable products with the purpose of making a difference, thinking about the future of all children in the world. I use Natural EcoMaterials and reuse natural fabrics giving them a second life. At the moment I am creating sanitary products; makeup removal, sanitary pads, breast pads, etc. as part of my online business Onda Exeter. I hope my work supports more people to make a difference in the world.

I was already into zero waste but this lockdown make me realise more and more about what is really important in life. More than ever I appreciated my family, the life I am living, Mother Nature and all the other blessings that I cannot buy. As a mother I can see more clearly what I want to transmit to my child. This lockdown is teaching me lots of things which I am very grateful for. ”

“I work with large scale immersive installation using various combinations of sculpture, kinetics, sound and moving image. This way of working is not sustainable with a small child and I am trying to develop more low key, immediate and continuous processes.

We had moved into a new house two weeks before lockdown. My partner is a key worker and out each day. I am home every day with my boisterous 4 year old boy and our greyhound. As I returned to work when my child was just 4 months old, the lockdown time has been like a second opportunity at maternity leave. This time with my child is especially poignant as my own mother has been in hospital all throughout lockdown and is not allowed visitors. It has also been an intense time as my little boy and I have been alone together all day every day while my partner is at work. We have shared the extremes of laughter and bonding along with mounting frustration towards one another and the situation. Nature and our daily walks have provided both wonder and relief and we have both developed a big love of snails!”

“My art work is about sharing peoples’ stories often with the intent of challenging preconceptions. I’m currently embroidering women’s stories of pregnancy and new motherhood in the pandemic, but when not in lock down I work a lot with etching.

I usually live in London, but during lockdown my husband and I have moved in with my parents into my childhood home in Torquay. I have spent many hours sewing in my parents’ dining room and wearing wetsuits as our morning sea swim has been getting me through this time.”

“I am a self taught illustrator with a special interest in the esoteric. One of my recent projects was creating a 23 card oracle deck which I successfully crowd-funded and produced. I worked on the drawings for just over a year in any spare moment I had, whilst simultaneously caring for my children. With my work I want to draw people’s attention to our relationship with the living world, as well as our relationships to our inner landscapes and each other.

I have a 6 year old daughter and 3 year old twins. During lockdown my partner has been working full time, so I’ve been alone with our children. In these portraits I wanted to communicate the near impossibility of pursuing my work and creative practice, whilst also exploring all the ways in which me and the kids create together.”

“My making is with reused fabric and I run a small recycled fabric initiative in the city, teaching up cycling, mending and craftivism. Obviously all workshops were suspended initially and since July have been online. So now we’re extra specially busy, filming and editing short demonstrations that would be hard to show live. Through lockdown (which continues in Mexico) I have been living in our flat with my husband and 4 children, ages 11-19. The Summer holidays have been basically non-existent, nowhere to go and no-one visiting, and school starts again online in mid August.

I confess home schooling and lack of alone time were my defining issues when we took these pictures. I’d tried sitting in the middle of the schoolers and mending or embroidering but sometimes I just want to be on my own with the sewing machine! We have done a few nice projects with the children, making cushions for a new bored corner and things like that but sometimes the unfinished projects seem overwhelming…. Although complaining seems out of place, when some people are having a much worse time of it.”

“My home offers very limited interior range, being set in a converted truck and caravan and cohabited with my six year old daughter and her daddy, but we do enjoy access to plenty of outdoor space (thank all things sacred), which has been an absolute lifeline during lockdown.

My making has its focus in singing and song-writing, particularly connecting with wildness, our innate nature and savouring the land and Earth. I run Wild Birds Singing, a woodland family singing group, The Feral Chorus, a nature connected unchoir and perform as a singer song writer. I’ve been experimenting offering all of these creative facets online through lockdown with varying degrees of success and have discovered a surprising degree of connection and reciprocal value to be found within the digital sphere.

In my portraits I was interested in exploring the juxtaposition between our wildness and restriction, the great outdoors and incarceration, connection, crowding and loneliness, being touched out and demanded of but simultaneously undernourished socially. As I strive to compose this articulation of my experience my daughter is trying to wrench off my arm and shouting “see-saw”.”

“I am an independant artist-researcher who use their identities as a Black non-binary co-parent to find, make and collect new routes and forms to/of knowledge creation and sharing.

I most frequently use performance arts, moving images, installations and poetry to contribute to decolonising spaces by creating new assemblages of body/thing/space to address power imbalances.

During lockdown I have learnt to co-habit, co-co-work, and co-create with Eole 15 month old. In the first two weeks, Eole and I embarked on a home-based art residency. As our first artistic collaboration it challenged our learning development of one another. During this time my partner Jb has been working full-time outside, while the rest of our collective disrupted the use of private space at “home”.”

“I am on maternity leave but continuing to make and teach dance online in quarantine, creating workshops, classes, choreographies. I try to include my 8 month old son in all of these modes of working.

For lockdown we have been living in our London flat but soon will be traveling by car to Denmark then to Portugal to stay on my family’s farms. In my portrait I wanted to explore my need for space! Physically and mentally. ”

“I’m on maternity leave from my job as an college art teacher. I love working with clay and mixed media in my own artistic practice. I started journaling as part of the MWM Devon’s ‘Maternal Journal’ programme in March, and now I journal every day. My daughter has also started her own journal too, which has been a nice way to discuss our feelings.

Lockdown has been difficult for us as my son is only just 4 months old- it has been hard not to see family and friends and I feel he is growing so much! Expressing myself through my art has always really helped my mental health. Especially since losing my dad last year and my younger brother 7 years ago. My daughter started making an ‘egg factory’ at Easter using any junk modelling she could get her hands on. As lockdown progressed, it got bigger and more elaborately decorated. Each box became a ‘room’ or a shrine to someone or something. It got me thinking a lot about life and death, how we were all stuck in our houses during lockdown as if ‘boxed’, and we leave this life in a coffin box too. For us, lockdown became one of our most creative times together and a chance to talk and remember my dad and brother. ”

“I am currently writing my next commissioned show ‘Swim’ and am 5 months pregnant. I struggle with fatigue with a condition, so some days I spend watching clouds and trees from out of my ‘sick bed’ whilst I try and write. But active days are spent on the desolate fells with my daughter. We play make believe Hotel in an old quarry. We build cairns. We dip in the river. There are two physical extremes to our lockdown. Some days are spent looking through old baby things and my daughter uses them on her dollies whilst I work. On weekends we all cook together and sit out the front of our cottage to wave at the people going for walks on the lane. We like the conversation! I also get ‘me’ time when my husband takes the dog and kid out for an adventure and I get to switch off- currently found in colouring in a wild swimming colouring-in book to make up for the lack of being able to do much wild swimming at the moment!”

“My career as a visual artist extends over 20 years , where I have worked closely with communities and for leading arts organisations all over the UK and internationally on spectacular productions , carnivals and celebratory projects. I make giant puppets , structural costumes , headpieces and wings ... and I am passionate about passing on these skills to people who would like them, as well as making creative opportunities to build women’s resilience and enhance their wellbeing.

I live in a shared house , my children stay with me on weekends and some weekdays . I have a studio I have been able to work from. During lockdown I have met over 200 people, mostly women locally, who have offered to help make scrubs - a need that emerged from the emergency. The truth is most of us have been working alone , in our homes , but together -and without them I would have not been able to realise our true potential. A few of us have had to work together physically to make the job easier on us all- for example , when cutting hundreds of metres of fabric. My children have been part of this process - at the workshop, helping me assemble kits ready to go out. ”

“I have a strong connection to my domestic space, which manifests in my use of the duster as a catalyst for creative and personal expression. Home is the focus of my study and the hub of my creativity. Making happens in and around family life as I don’t have a studio - while the dinner cooks, watching TV and usually spreads all over the room on a weekend afternoon! The hub of this creativity is our sunny conservatory, attached to our kitchen, in which the sewing machine has taken up permanent residence, along with piles of fabric and half-finished projects, which leak into the rest of the house.

Lockdown in our house has been all about making. My youngest daughter (aged 12) is currently up-cycling her wardrobe and two of my older daughters, who returned home for the duration, rediscovered their love for making in renewed time spent at home. One has been busy making cushions for a new flat (designed by me, embroidered by her) and making countless bags. Both have painted their leather jackets with collaborative designs.

I always have several projects on the go, which currently includes a lot of crochet and embroidery. My teaching and professional background is in graphic design but my artistic practice and focus of my academic study and research is textiles based. My making at home is all about some form of stitching, which I am passionate about. I love to make in every opportunity that presents itself.”

“The last few months have been about adapting, change, birthing new ideas and new bodies. When the lockdown happened I was in the middle of producing a year long project supporting artistic opportunities for mothers in Devon. So suddenly there was so much to reorganise, rethink. Somehow I adapted the projects and dreamt up new ones responding to our new normal - I have been enjoying learning so much so fast.

But I have been consumed with making it happen, my body held so much tension, fear, grief. The simple joy of playfulness, daily kitchen table art, baking and bird watching with my 4 year old daughter has been such a gift and it helps keep me present in my body.

I am now 16 weeks pregnant, nothing fits any more, I’m coming to terms with not being able to run due to the daily sickness. But I am finally able to exhale. After my first scan, having lost a baby 2 years ago, I cried for the first time in 2 years, when the sonographer said “and there is the baby’s heart beat”. I let it all go in that dark room.”

“I am writing a novel. During lockdown I have done all my writing on the children’s bedroom floor - I had to move off the desk in my bedroom to make room for my husband’s work. He would not usually work from here but, for the last three months, he has had to run a theatre company from within our small domestic space. We live in a little house and there have been 5 of us in it: two children, my husband, my mother (granny!) and me.

Our entire family is sometimes on different screens (iPads, phones, computers, kindles), or I am attempting to get the children dressed and tooth-brushed at 4pm in the afternoon - our lockdown life has been chaotic and unruly, as we attempt to sustain our creative work and muddle along altogether. My son is on the spectrum and can become very aggressive when he is distressed, so we have had to learn how to respond creatively to him. We have had many fights during lockdown, some playful, some not so much! It’s important to stage our fights well - lightsabers, swords, shields, broom handles are standard props in our lives at present.”