Join us for a closing reception! Experience the artwork, celebrate BABS and the local birthing community, and share your story.

There will be many opportunities to engage: read a book, share a birth story, honor a loved one, thank a birth provider, chat with the community, learn something new. Tea and snacks provided.

Join Tandem Birth Center’s Haddie Katz for a brief informational presentation on the history of midwifery and Tandem’s practice in Bloomington today.

image credit Bloom Magazine

Let’s Talk! Join artist Amanda Duba to chat all things birth and parenting and get a peek at the process of Podcasting. A table is prepared for narratives often neglected to be vocalized, documented, and amplified through modern  platforms of audio technology. A space to sit, share experiences and connect with each other, A Mother’s Table is an extension of the podcast, Gay Sera Sera. Together these projects activate heternormative spaces to function as communal growth and development for marginalized groups. Follow Gay Sera Sera on Spotify to hear the upcoming series A Mother’s Table.

How do we help children thrive?  Join us for our Safe, Stable Nurturing Relationships and Environments (SSNRE) Cafe Activity.  Research shows that safe, stable and nurturing relationships and environments support optimal child development - and have the potential to reduce forms of violence, foster resilience, and prevent substance abuse behaviors in adolescence.  We invite the community to explore the constructs of safety, stability and nurturance to create environments and relationships that help children thrive.  

Visit the exhibit and make some birth art!

Through the creative process of collage and writing, community members make unique works of art honoring both individual and collective birthing experiences.

Special thanks to artist and educator Yara Cluver for her inspiration and creativity.

Indiana's maternal mortality rate has remained very high - the third worst in the nation. The vast majority of these deaths are preventable. Our infant mortality has improved, but remains too high. There is much we can do as a community, and the things that we can do to address one, helps with the other, too. Join us for this facilitated conversation. Sponsored by MARA, Maternal Advocates Resource Alliance.

Guided walking tour of the three Lineages Exhibitions.

Birth by the Book, Herman B Wells Library

PreConception, Cook Center, Maxwell Hall

Creative Rememberings, Monroe County Public Library.

Tour will start at MCPL parking lot entrance.

Join members of the former Bloomington Area Birth Services community for a celebration of birth past/present/future.

Remember BABS and your own Bloomington birthing experiences. Chat with birth educators, doulas, and other members of the community. Swing by for a quick visit or settle in for a long conversation.

Add your stories to the archive and exhibit as you wish. Tea and snacks will be provided.

Come share a birth story - your own or from your family. Did you have a hospital birth? A cesarean section? Did you give birth in the 1980s? the 1970s?  During the pandemic? What was your experience? 

Families need community support before, during, and after birth - that is something that has always been true. Understanding the stories of the past as well as the present can be an important starting place for support and understanding what is needed now and in the future. MARA, the Maternal Advocates Resource Alliance, is a Bloomington-based community coalition that aims to prevent maternal mortality and severe morbidity in South Central Indiana. We hold listening session, host community postpartum trainings, and advocate for positive policy changes that benefit families. Come share a birth story - your own or from your family.

Explore the PreConception exhibit and chat with the artists and project leads.

Cook Center, Maxwell Hall, Indiana University

Join artist and educator Megan Young for a skill share workshop. Participants will experiment with app-based 3D scanning tools as a way to digitally archive objects related to their birthing experiences.

Please bring an object for scanning that is important to your family story.

Join Lineages of Birth curator Emily Zarse, writer Sarah Knott (Mother is a Verb), and contributing exhibition artists for a discussion on the topic of birth and reproduction, and their work.

Learn more about reproductive health and birth options in Bloomington with Tandem’s director Julie Duhon.

Their mission is to improve perinatal outcomes by trusting patients, increasing options for care, and challenging the status quo.

Tandem visions a community where child-bearing families of all kinds have choices in the care they receive and find support and connection during these transformative years.

Guided walking tour of the three Lineages Exhibitions.

Birth by the Book, Herman B Wells Library

PreConception, Cook Center, Maxwell Hall

Creative Rememberings, Monroe County Public Library.

Tour will start at MCPL parking lot entrance.