WOMEN & CHILDREN FIRST

“IT IS NO MEASURE OF HEALTH TO BE WELL ADJUSTED TO A PROFOUNDLY SICK SOCIETY”
— Sinéad O’Connor

We all just want to be healthy, right?
Have we ever thought about why? 

From 6 to 15 March, we will organise the very last edition of the Women and Children First festival. This time we will focus on the theme of ‘health’. 'Good' health markers are increasingly used as indicators of success and of virtue in our society. Messaging from governments and industry lets citizens know that the unhealthy amongst us might be creating a burden we all feel in our pockets.  In this edition of Women and Children First Festival we will explore health as a moral value system.

Is my health your business? Is our individual good health an obligation to a well functioning society?  And what is ‘good’ health anyway?

This edition of WOMEN & CHILDREN FIRST provocatively imagines health as a social construct. Our programme platforms the work of artists either living outside or questioning the notion of health as virtue and ill health as moral failure.  

From the experience of fat people for whom society sees value only in their erasure, to the social stigma surrounding certain illnesses correlated to ‘lifestyle’, to the silence surrounding long-term physical and mental illness and disability, WOMEN & CHILDREN FIRST will spotlight the intersection of stigma and conversations around health. This programme will offer a space of respite for the ill, the exhausted and the unhealthy as well as for curious people trying to ‘live healthy’ and maybe failing from time to time.

"As a fat person, I often see bodies that look like mine represented as a message of caution, a literal health warning.  With this programme we flip the script and reverse the mirror. If you are interested to know what it might feel like on the other side, this festival offers a glimpse."

— Artistiek coördinator en programmator van het festival Róise Goan