Abstract

Pregnancy and early motherhood are times of great change for a woman, embodied in physiological, emotional, social and deeply personal transformations. Becoming a mother requires multiple creativities, in day-to-day practices as well as in renegotiations of identities and roles. This life period can also be complicated by postnatal depression (PND), an illness thought to affect almost 13% of new mothers in the UK, characterised by often debilitating depression and/or anxiety. With problems in existing pharmacological and psychological treatment models for PND , this talk will draw upon newly conducted mixed-method research to explore how engagement in arts-based creativities can relate to, and impact upon, the wellbeing of pregnant women and new mothers.

Rosie Perkins is a Research Fellow in Performance Science at the Royal College of Music London and mother to her two-year old son. Rosie holds a BMus and MA from the University of Sheffield and a PhD from the University of Cambridge. Her current research interests lie in music and mental health, musicians’ wellbeing, identities and career development, and the learning cultures of higher music education. Rosie is an honorary member of the Dutch research group Lifelong Learning in Music, a Fellow of the Institute of Mental Health University of Nottingham, and a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.