Fertility Fest 2018
This coming May, Fertility Fest will be back for its second edition at the Bush Theatre in London (8-13 May). You can check out and book for the six day programme of events at www.fertilityfest.com.
A unique festival which recognizes that everyone has a fertility story whether or not they have children, the festival Founders - Gabby Vautier and Jessica Hepburn - represent two very different outcomes of the IVF journey. Gabby has IVF twins after four rounds of treatment and Jessica is still childless after eleven. Both women are passionate about creating a world that brings people together to discuss fertility, infertility, modern families and the science of making babies. In particular they want to improve the understanding of the emotional experience of people who struggle to conceive in order to achieve better care and outcomes for everyone, whatever their story, however it ends.
The festival does this through the power of the arts. Fertility Fest 2018 will involve over 150 artists and fertility experts in a week-long programme of live events, discussion, debate, support and solidarity.
Highlights include:
Wednesday 9th May: There’s More To Life Than Having Children
In association with Fertility Network UK
7.30pm, Tickets £10
Featuring a host of special guests from the ‘Childless Not By Choice’ community including Fertility Fest’s Jessica Hepburn who will be talking about her new book 21 Miles: Swimming in search of the meaning of motherhood; Jody Day of Gateway Women; Stephanie Phillips, Founder of World Childless Week; Berenice Smith, Creator of Walk In Our Shoes and Nicci Fletcher from the CNBC Magazine.
Then, over the main festival weekend (Friday 11th to Sunday 13th May, tickets £35 for a full day of events) there will be appearances from film-maker Katie Barlow who will be talking about her documentary project Without Child; writers Sheridan Voysey and Tessa Broad – Sheridan will be dissecting that much heard question:‘Why don’t you just adopt?’ and Tessa will be reading from her 2017 book Dear You – a letter to her unborn children. Artist Tina
Reid will be presenting her moving installation project Photos I’ll Never Take and childless photographer Aaron Deemer will be presenting Please Make Yourself Uncomfortable about the male experience of infertility. There will also be talks by theatre-maker and writer Stella Duffy who will be telling us why: ‘Yes’, she wanted children but ‘no’, she doesn’t want yours!’
Fertility Fest is for anyone and everyone. It’s for people with and without children. It’s for people in treatment and beyond it. It’s for fertility professionals and also for the general public who are interested in how the human race is (and isn’t) being made today. We promise that whoever you are it will be engaging, entertaining and exceptionally enlightening and whilst you’re there, you’ll feel part of a very special Fertility Fest Family.
Book your tickets now. www.fertilityfest.com
“I think this is the exciting beginning of a new movement of ‘survivor activism’. Through all the different art forms you have found, artists are giving expression to the unheard voices of the pain of infertility.”
Susan Bewley Md FRCOG MA Professor of Women’s Health Kings College London on Fertility Fest 2016
“Thank you so much. Sometimes it feels like no-one else can know how it feels to have been through what I’ve lived through and still have no child. I’m very grateful”
Fertility Fest 2016 Attender