Project In Context

This project adopts a transdisciplinary approach through its combination of collaborative workshops, socially engaged practice, curatorial methods, writing, publication-making, sound experimentation, and participant-led contribution.  Rather than operating solely within the boundaries of fine-art practice, the project incorporates forms of collective knowledge production, lived experience, and social participation as central methods of creative development.

Transdisciplinary practice differs from multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches because it moves beyond the combination of disciplines and instead seeks to create new forms of understanding through collaboration, participation, and the integration of multiple forms of knowledge. Nicolescu (2014) describes transdisciplinary as existing “between, across and beyond” disciplines, emphasising the importance of dialogue, complexity and lived experience within research processes. This is particularly relevant to a project exploring trans identity and fertility, where emotional experience, bodily autonomy, medical systems, and social understanding intersect in ways that cannot be fully explored through a single disciplinary way of working.

The workshop structure is central to the project’s transdisciplinary methodology. Workshops function simultaneously as artistic practice, discussion space, research method, and curatorial development. As well as, hopefully bringing in trans artists that specialise in varying subjects to help run them. Activities such as collaborative writing, mind mapping, zine-making, spoken discussion, and sound experimentation allow participants to explore their experiences surrounding fertility, transition, family, care, and the future through multiple forms of communication and creative production. In this context, participants are not just contributors to the research and creative development but actively shape the direction and outcomes of the project through collective reflection, voice, and exchange.

This approach also reflects Mäkelä’s (2007) discussion of practice-led research, which argues that knowledge can emerge directly through processes of making and material engagement rather than existing separately from artistic practice. Within the workshops, creative participation itself becomes a method of reflection and knowledge production. The activities are not designed solely to produce exhibition outcomes, but to shape them through creating safe spaces where discussion, experimentation, and collaborative making can function as one.

To further this, Giri (2002) argues that transdisciplinary involves forms of “creative participation” capable of addressing complex human experiences beyond institutional or disciplinary limitations. This is especially significant within a project exploring trans fertility, as conversations surrounding fertility preservation are often confined to clinical and medical, or political frameworks. Through collaborative workshops and socially engaged methods, the project instead creates space for emotional reflection, sharing experiences, and participant-led discussion amongst peers as opposed to the usual channels.

This project is also deeply informed by the socially engaged practice of Resolve Collective, whose work combines education and community participation through collaborative forms of space-making. Their practice demonstrates how exhibitions and artistic environments can function as platforms for collective dialogue and shared authorship amongst local communities as opposed to individual artistic expression. This understanding strongly informs the collaborative structure, but particularly their project You Get A Car [Everybody Gets A Car], 2024 where they worked with the local communities of Liverpool to distribute resources that Tate Liverpool were discarding through community workshops and free car boot sales, has been a major inspiration curatorially for this project. 

Russell, Wickson and Carew (2008) describe transdisciplinarity as a methodology capable of bringing together multiple forms of expertise, including non-academic and experiential knowledge, in response to complex social issues. This idea is also particularly relevant to a project centred on fertility, identity, healthcare, and bodily autonomy, as lived experience and emotional knowledge become essential forms of understanding alongside artistic and theoretical research.

The collaborative structure of the project also challenges traditional distinctions between artist, participant, curator, researcher, and audience. Workshops function not only as preparatory stages towards an exhibition outcome, but as meaningful social and creative spaces in themselves. The project becomes built on collaboration, discussion, making, and reflection which is equally as important as the final exhibition outcome. This reflects a broader transdisciplinary understanding of creative practice as process-based and socially situated rather than confined within singular artistic outputs.

Accessibility and participant wellbeing are also integral to the project’s methodology. Because the workshops engage with emotionally sensitive themes surrounding fertility, transition, family, and medical experiences, participant consent, flexibility, optional anonymity, and wellbeing remain central considerations throughout the project. These ethical structures are embedded within the methodology itself as opposed to lying as afterthoughts within the work.

Overall, the project demonstrates how transdisciplinary practice can operate through a collaborative culmination of knowledge, socially engaged methods of practice, creative participation, and collective reflection. By choosing to combine workshop facilitation, curatorial practice, publication-making, sound, writing, and participant-led contribution, the project moves beyond traditional disciplinary boundaries in order to create a shared space for opening up conversation around fertility and exploring complex experiences surrounding fertility within the trans+ community.