“When looking after children, they really only need two things to be entertained 1) a rohlik and 2) something to destroy.” So said one of the speakers, and also a babysitter, at The Parent-Friendly Culture Symposium of Accessibility, a symposium exploring ways in which to make cultural events more parent-friendly. I laughed when I was told this by the curator of the Parent-Friendly Culture project, Petr Dlouhý. I have a one-year-old daughter and can attest to the fact that she does indeed love carbs and also loves destroying things with her small but strong hands.
Held at the beautiful Žižkostel community and cultural centre, the three-day symposium was part of the Parent-Friendly Culture project coordinated by Studio ALTA, initiated by artist and mother Marika Smreková, and within the framework of the EU project On Mobilisation. As well as mapping the current state of accessibility of the cultural sector, it explored a key question:
What is required to have accessible cultural events for parents? And how does it benefit us to do so? I was intrigued by the premise of the symposium as well as pleasantly surprised (who often cares about parents?!)
foto Anežka Medová
On the first day, a public hearing was coordinated by the Institute of Anxiety, with 45 guests sharing their experiences of accessible culture for parents and children. I was not able to attend that but was able to make it to the second day of the Symposium where a presentation of Studio Alta’s efforts on the Parent-Friendly Culture project was given. With tea, coffee, snacks, and mats and cushions on the floor — giving it a relaxed air which was not only very child-friendly but also adult-friendly — the set-up of the room underscored Studio ALTA’s overall point that having a parent and child-friendly culture benefits everyone, including non-parents.
In the presentation given by curator Petr Dlouhý, we learn that the project began for them when they wondered why did all the people who had been part of their audience disappear after they became parents?
The other central question of the project was how to bring those audiences back. To answer this, the project came up with several strategies to address the barriers that might prevent parents from accessing cultural events. From connecting parents, artists, and non-parents via Facebook and WhatsApp groups to keep people updated about parent-friendly cultural events to making their regular program accessible by starting earlier and providing free childcare at events. They have also initiated new intergenerational performative works that allow children and parents to participate (including work created by Marika Smreková, Seeing the Invisible which was showcased during the Symposium), thereby transforming the art itself by becoming more inclusive. As an indicator of the project’s aim of creating lasting and sustainable change in practices, they offer materials they’ve created for sharing, such as registration forms, childcare handover protocols and a network of babysitters and care workers. The day included a sharing of best practices from the Czech Republic and Germany in making culture accessible, as well as a group exercise of brainstorming and imagining new possibilities for a more accessible culture.
Overall, the day highlighted for me how small changes are often all that is required to transform an event to parent-friendly; it doesn’t have to have special content – any show from any programme can be made accessible. It also struck me that although this was focused on having parents and children in the space, what it really was about, or what the outcome would be, is the creation of intergenerational cultural spaces. How enriched we would be to have public spaces that encourage socialising across generations, whether we are parents or not. And how much this would give not only to public life, but also to ourselves as individuals.
But perhaps the most radical aspect about this whole project aside from its practical value is the way it draws attention to the invisible labour of parents, as well as acknowledging the value they bring to our society. It is less about creating separate events, but rather about opening up the existing culture for parents and children, and by doing so, perhaps transforming culture itself.
However, I did wonder how much change can be done by cultural institutions without also demanding a change in culture with a capital C, i.e. wider society.
To answer the question of where do parents disappear to, as a relatively new parent I can answer this for myself - as a stay at home mother, my time is now spent doing mind-numbing manual labour like cleaning, cooking, changing nappies, feeding and playing – on repeat. I breastfeed, so my baby has become an extension of my body, feeding at all times of the day and still throughout the night. I have not slept uninterrupted for over a year. I never go anywhere without the stroller, so along with the baby inside, I push an extra 15kg on the street every day. She has separation anxiety, normal for her age, so we have to do almost everything together. I don’t think those without young children can ever quite understand when I say, sometimes I literally don’t have time to have a shower or take a shit alone.
I’ve had to start and stop writing this article so many times because she wouldn’t let me continue, needing attention constantly. Having a baby is not like having a pet, where you can feed them and then leave them by themselves. So, where have I disappeared to? Simply, as a parent it is hard to find the physical or mental energy sometimes to even think about going to a cultural event.
So, although all these practical solutions for making cultural events more parent-friendly are really great (providing childcare at events, starting early, etc.), I’m not sure how much that can help parents get to those events in the first place if parents do not receive support overall. In our society, we sadistically believe that just one person (usually the mother) can do the child-rearing alone most of the time - hence why long-term parental leave in the Czech Republic is only given to one parent. This labour often falls on women; even now, we still do not expect as much from fathers as we do of mothers. There is no postpartum care for mothers like they have in The Netherlands, where the state pays for maternity care specialists to give intensive support to mothers and babies in their homes for up to ten days. Over here in the Czech Republic, you are sent home on your own with a new baby (bleeding and exhausted) with minimal education on how to take care of this baby, and if you don’t have extended family to help out, as was the case for me, then too bad. The postpartum period for me was brutal. There are also long waitlists for nurseries and childcare facilities in Prague because there are not enough of them, and as I found out while pregnant, it is a scramble to find an available paediatrician.
How can parents, in particular mothers who bear the brunt of the childrearing work, think about participating in culture if they are simply too run down?
We won’t truly have a parent-friendly culture until we have a parent-friendly society. To really address this, we need political solutions for supporting parents as well as a political will that wants to centre parents and children. A political will that actually cares about mothers. And since our society depends on the crucial labour of child-rearing, the question can be asked why we do not centre parenting more.
In a similar way, a thought nagged at me throughout the day. The explicit question posed by the Parent-Friendly Culture project: where have all the people that were part of our audience disappeared to when they became parents, means that the question is not really about gaining new audiences, or a different audience from what they usually attract. It is about winning back their old audience.
And that, for me, is just not radical enough. Because it avoids the bigger question of who the arts can be for. We recognise that parents are important for culture. But what kind of parents? From what backgrounds or milieu? What about parents who never went in the first place?
It sidesteps the question of how the arts are exclusionary in many ways and for certain kinds of parents in particular.
I am middle-class thanks to my partner, who has a well-paid job. And yet even in my privileged position, I am aghast at how much it costs to raise a baby, with the cost just exponentially rising as they get older. Nappies, formula (for those who don’t breastfeed), pram, stroller, crib, toys, groceries, car seat, the list is endless…the financial drain is real. So is the financial precarity of a parent. It would take my partner just losing his job or not being able to work to topple us down the ladder of socio-economic safety. Unlike before, to justify regular spending on cultural events is a real consideration.
How much more so for a parent who is not as privileged as me?
Art becomes even more distant when you become a parent. But for some, it was never close.
How will cultural institutions try to reach out to those parents? Why are they not interested in them?
And some wider questions: Who is the art for? Who gets to create it? And can art really speak about the human condition if it remains an exclusive, bourgeois activity?
I wish the Symposium explored these wider questions as part of its parent-friendly approach. I wish it also emphasised lobbying and advocacy for policy change as part of its work, because society needs to change alongside culture; because I cannot see how culture can truly become accessible without structural and political change.
On the last day of the Symposium, there was a workshop titled Small Moves Tall Moves run by Berlin-based group Tanz und Elternschaft (Dance and Parenthood). I almost didn’t make it because I was so tired, the usual tiredness, but also some complications related to giving birth that were still plaguing me. When I turned up, I saw that the main hall was filled with mats, skipping ropes, balls, hula hoops, costumes, lights and music. We were invited to move around and play in the space, adults and children together. No rules, except to be responsible for our own bodies by accepting to engage in a movement or moving away when not. The artists and their children led the way by starting with a skipping game with a giant rope that moved around the room. Sometimes we played by ourselves, other times we moved with each other in improvised synchronicity. Mo Li, my daughter, mostly watched or played by herself, but always staying close to me which is what she does when she is feeling shy.
As she became more confident, and ventured a bit away from me to see what other games people were playing, I followed the instructions of 'creating your own game' by laying down on one of the mats and felt my body relax immediately, something I haven't been able to do much since becoming a parent. I felt a letting go of my body into the mat, a quiet exhale.
Becoming a parent and being responsible for a vulnerable tiny human being, you become paradoxically more vulnerable yourself. Being a parent requires an enormous amount of support - practical, material, mental and emotional - to take on the monumental task of looking after new life. The cliche of it takes a village to raise a child is inherently true, not only for the child but for the parent. Especially for those whose extended families are far away or whose own families are not very supportive, a parent-friendly society will make all the difference.
And in that workshop, there was something about the way that the artists had created and carried the space for us - not only of play but of consideration and care between us, where, for a moment, it was a space that I could let go and be held – a space that could hold all of us, together.
This is what I imagine a parent-friendly culture and society to be like. And that can only be of benefit to the children.
May Ngo