Fertility Fest is the world’s only arts festival that brings together leading artists with fertility professionals, patients and the public. The festival discusses what it means to make and sometimes not make babies in the 21st century, and runs from today until 12 May at the Barbican in London, UK.
Now in its 3rd year, Fertility Fest is a 4-week programme of events, including performances, debate and discussion. The festival brings art and science together to improve people’s understanding of human fertility, as well as the gamut of emotions felt by those struggling to conceive.
Fertility patients and arts producers, Gabby Vautier and Jessica Hepburn, who felt there was a need for an arts festival dedicated to infertility, founded the festival. So what motivated them?
“We are arts professionals as well as IVF patients,” says Hepburn, “and what we feel artists can do brilliantly is to tell the stories behind the science. I hope that by bringing the arts and science together in a festival we can achieve social change.”
So in London, they created the world’s first art festival dedicated to infertility issues. With this in mind Fertility Fest has three main objectives:
- To improve understanding of the emotional journey of people who struggle or go on a complex journey to conceive, because it can be hard and horrible and we want there to be better patient care and outcomes for everyone whatever their fertility story and however it ends.
- To improve the level of public conversation about infertility and reproductive science – what it can do, what it cannot do and how it’s affecting the way the human race is being made.
- To improve fertility education – young people need to learn more than how ‘not to get pregnant’, they deserve a more rounded and robust understanding of human fertility so they have the best chance of creating the families they want in the future, with or without children, with or without reproductive science
This year’s festival has a full and vibrant programme on offer, including a selection of plays and theatre performances, lectures, public debates, film/documentary screenings and artists-in-residence for each day.
To find more click here.
Or you can watch the launch video.
