Feeding Futures Floor Flag
The Floor Flag is a place for feelings. It is a movable, adaptable situation - a site for intergenerational connection, listening and better understanding of diverse experiences of infant feeding.
The flag is a design research artefact. It is a demonstration and exercise in designing for connection.
Flags are powerful symbols, carrying meanings and cultural narratives. The design of a flag speaks to historical and political complexities. When viewed through an intersectional feminist lens, flags can also be understood as instruments of control, particularly concerning societal and gendered expectations placed upon women, mothers, and parents. Liz Berry's poem, "The Republic of Motherhood," underscores many struggles of motherhood and associated expectations, with imagery evoking both pride and entrapment. The flag in the poem becomes a metaphor for societal norms and expectations that, while providing a sense of identity, simultaneously restrict and define women's roles. In this context, the flag is a reminder of the multifaceted nature of identity, motherhood, and the ever-evolving struggle for autonomy within the constraints of societal expectations. The Floor Flag is a response to Berry's poem in the context of infant feeding and my ongoing PhD research.
Baby Week Leeds - The Feed Project
The Floor Flag was displayed at The Tetley Gallery, Leeds in 2023 as part of Baby Week Leeds. The Flag was displayed alongside The Art and Design Manifesto for Making and Feeding Futures, which had been re-designed by Textbook Studio for The Tetley gallery 4 space.
This exhibition also featured the Feeding Chair, the Feed Zines, and Colouring Sheets from the Diversity in Infant Feeding campaign.
The Feed Project exhibition is part of Feed, an arts-based project developed by In Certain Places at the University of Central Lancashire, in collaboration with Corridor8 and Textbook Studio.
This event and exhibition was part of The Tetley’s Baby Week Leeds takeover programme, 14–19 November 2023. Thanks to Fiona Finchett for the photos in the carousel below.
A Floor Flag is for all, and everyone is valued, every body is welcome. It is an invitation to gather, or sit alone, to think, talk, listen. To feel the feelings that we often do not have a place or time for as mothers, birthing people and caregivers in UK culture. To cry and laugh, to heal, restore and repair. It is only once we can repair that we can reclaim and tell new stories, and imagine new futures for feeding.
The Floor Flag can be folded up, packed into its bag and carried to other spaces and places, for new situations, more conversations with different people.
The movable words are prompts from eight infant feeding-related activists. The words are starting points, triggers or stepping stones for thoughts and conversation.
As an object it contains echos of protest textiles of my childhood, of Social Justice and Peace activism and the work of Greenham Women. The domestic scale, and intergenerational engagement is inspired by the work of mother designer Moki Cherry, and the flag making is adapted by work by Annetta Pedretti. The flag also builds on the workshop that I ran at the Whitworth Gallery in Manchester in 2022.
