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Birthlight Trust Launch Conference
'Visions of Infant Joy'

At Birthlight our main priority has always been to create an atmosphere of productive ease and well being that facilitates interaction and that reflects our principles of respecting difference and valuing each individual. We have grown organically from informal small gatherings hosted in friends’ sitting rooms in Cambridge to a training structure that includes tutors in distant countries on the basis of a network of friends of friends.

The 2006 Cambridge conference is also a celebration of this network and the friendships within it. We hope that this positive spirit of extending friendship and creating community will be conveyed not only in the speakers’ presentations of their visions and findings but also in the event altogether as it unfolds. We are grateful to the speakers who have already confirmed their participation; it will be a great pleasure to honour their work and host them to the best of out ability. We are also grateful to Homerton College for facilitating this conference in Cambridge.

Monday 10 July

• Keynote speech from Joseph Chilton Pearce (invitation accepted but travel to the UK at the time subject to doctor’s approval)
• Speakers who will be participating include: Michel Odent, Ina May Gaskin, Dame Marilyn Strathern and Marie-Clare Busnel
• There will be a choice of workshops with Blandine Calais Germain, Gowri Motha, Catherine Dolto and David Rodgers

Tuesday 11 July

Tradition, science, innovation: enjoyment and well being before and after birth

• Speakers who will be participating include: Frederick Leboyer, Vivette Glover, Martin Richards, Alison Baum, Janet Balaskas and Françoise Barbira Freedman.
• There will be a choice of workshops with: Basia Szpak, Ina May Gaskin, Cherry Bond, Peter Lomas and Sally Lomas

Wednesday 12 July

• Speakers who will be participating include: Sheila Kitzinger, Amali Lokumanage, Colwyn Trevarthen and Binnie Dansby.
• There will be a choice of workshops with Joanna Hawthorne, Amanda Walker, Emmaline Kitson, Uma Dinsmore-Tuli, Shawn Tomlinson, Beverley Nolan and Sally Lomas.
• Frederick Leboyer will also be running an additional workshop ‘Preparing for birth with breath, sound and movement’. This session is open to the public at a fee of £20 which will be collected on the door to cover costs. Expectant mothers are particularly welcome to this session.
• There will be opportunities to visit Cambridge and it’s surroundings, options will be announced in good time.

Other Conference Features

• Poster session for contributors not giving talks and representatives of organisations that Birthlight has been collaborating with.
• Displays by Suzanne Arms, Profulla Mohanti, Rhea Quien. Display of baby artefacts at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.
• Video gallery
• Book A conference volume will be planned with a UK publisher in the coming months
• Conference Exhibition by external organisations, charities and companies.
• DVD / CD Most of the conference will be recorded and available for purchase on video DVD’s and audio CD’s .

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