A NEW arts project for survivors of mother-and-baby homes from the north west is set to meet in Derry.
Mother-and-baby homes were institutions that housed women and girls who had became pregnant outside of marriage.
Thousands of people are said to have entered these institutions in the North of Ireland over a 68-year period.
Stormont agreed to set up a public inquiry into mother-and-baby homes last year following a recommendation by a long-awaited report in January 2021.
The Sunflower Project is to officially begin on January 26, with a face-to-face information session taking place on Wednesday, January 12, at the Holywell Trust in Derry for those who may be interested in taking part.
Speaking to BBC Radio Foyle on Tuesday, Shauna Kelpie, who is helping to organise the project, said it will be designed by those taking part.
“At the outset we are not establishing what sort of creative response somebody might have to that particular aspect of their life journey,” Ms Kelpie said.
“The whole project is going to be designed in consultation and in collaboration with those who are participating.”
The Sunflower Project is one of eight new projects funded through The Ideas Fund which is delivered by the British Science Association (BSA).
The project is set out in two 10-week periods and will give people affected by the institutions “an opportunity for creative expression”.
“Some people may want to do something around writing, they may want to do something that is on stage, take photos, paintings or make a dress that helps them move through a particular memory of that time in their lives,” said Ms Kelpie.
Catriona Cunningham, who is from Derry and gave birth to her daughter in a mother-and-baby home in Newry in the 1980s, has said the project will be a safe space for those affected by the institutions.
“The project is for women, children or anyone who has been impacted by mother and baby institutions for the Derry and Strabane area,” Ms Cunningham said.
“This will be a safe and welcoming space and it will be very light-hearted, no one will be doing anything they don’t want to do and it will be lead by participants like myself.”
Ms Cunningham said it is very important that women and children from mother-and-baby homes “should feel no shame at all” about what happened to them.
“People should be able to come out and talk about things that happened to themselves that wasn’t there fault,” she said.
Ms Cunningham said she personally intends to use the project to write or do some acting, but said it is entirely up to each individual how they want to utilise the project.
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