Midwives
as portals
If we design our care systems based on what we know, we miss the potential of the unknown. Social dreaming enhances healthcare innovation by uniting diverse perspectives and tapping into collective knowledge.
Towards ecosystems of care
Imagine a future where every birth is an empowering, supported experience. A world where innovative care models, community involvement, and thoughtful technology blend seamlessly to create an ecosystem of holistic, human-centered care for every expectant parent and newborn, regardless of their background or geography.
We imagined birth futures for the year 2100 with midwives from Lima-Callao, Peru, during a two-day workshop hosted by futures ecologist Marjolein Pijnappels, teaching expert María José Julia Sánchez Aguilar and midwife/PhD candidate Susana Ku Carbonell, Our common aim was to envision a future where human-centered practices are empowered by technology and integrated services.
Photography by Saba Kusonoki and Marjolein Pijnappels
A pluriversal ethics of interconnectedness
As visionary ‘portals’, midwives must engage in continuous self-reflection, deconstructing their authority and ceding power to the leadership of impacted communities. Embracing decolonial praxis fully means rejecting colonial binaries, interrogating systemic oppression, and uplifting pluriversal ethics of reciprocity and interconnectedness.
More about this project on birth-futures.com.
The midwife-participants enlisted local flora in the creation of speculative future prototypes, narratives and objects for the future of ‘a good birth’.
Images of future birth and midwives, imagined using AI generative imaging. Creating these images took a lot of ‘hacking’ the AI: defaulting to ‘white birth’ and technologization made it hard to conjure images that are rooted in the Peruvian cultures, histories and geologies.
“Their care extended far past the clinical, tending to the intergenerational bonds and social fabrics that allow new life to truly thrive.”
Exhibit at the Lima Institute of Midwifery of the speculative designs and AI generated images used as prompts in the workshop.
Bringing social dreams for a better birth to life creating prototypes and stories.
Improptu art exhibit at the Hacienda Hotel in Callao.
“Fue un taller que amplió mi visión y pude dar una mirada hacia el futuro. Todo fue valioso: los testimonios, las dinámicas.”
It was a workshop that broadened my vision, allowing me to look toward the future. Everything was valuable—the testimonies, the dynamics (quote by one of the participants of Futuros del Parto Peru)
“Vegetal womb”