TRIBUNE      LOTFI AOULAD | SEPTEMBER 2025

Wellbeing and Well-birthing: Towards Cultural Maieutic

The Maternité des Lilas (Maternity of les Lilas) will soon close its doors. It is not just lights going out, it is a whole story of human lives that is flickering. The one that, for sixty-one years, more than 22,000 days, carried a different way of caring for and welcoming life, with listening and consent at its heart.

I feel a deep sadness at this closure, mingled with immense joy at having been part of its History and its community. Because one day, I was there, crying out, alongside a mother in labour under the soft light of a birthing room. I once danced a Cuban rumba to help pace a dilation. I made a quick sandwich for a father in the midst of doubt. I saw midwives place their hands on bodies only after asking, saw smiles on exhausted faces, and witnessed that first exchanged glance between parents and child. I had never planned to become a doula. And yet, something was born in me. My first birth was a crossing. It healed the child I had been, by allowing me to become the man I wish to be: a man turned towards life, ensuring it comes into the world with gentleness and respect. That day, I became an adult. It was also then that I understood how essential it is to make the world of birth converse with that of artistic creation. For even if the maternity closes, its teachings remain. This link between well birthing and wellbeing is my way of carrying forward the story of Les Lilas, of inscribing my own story within it, elsewhere, differently.

From birthing rooms to cultural stages

We still too often hold on to this image of the solitary artist, locked in doubts and forced to create through suffering. And yet, like childbirth, the creation of a work or a cultural project is never an isolated act. I have accompanied several births. I have observed profoundly inspiring teams, capable of combining attentiveness, humanity and organisation in a caring environment. Each birth is envisaged as a singular process, where rhythms, needs and desires are respected. In birthing rooms, every person: doctor, midwife, doula, nurse, partner, family, friends, has a precise role, yet all work together to accompany the birth under the best possible conditions. What if we thought about our cultural policies through this very model? Like a birth, artistic creation demands time, listening and resources. It carries within it the story of the one who conceives it. As a doula, I hold prenatal conversations with parents: we talk about fears, desires, expectations, and what they hope to experience. These exchanges lead to a birth plan, a way of preparing together. Why not imagine creation plans, co-constructed with artists, based on their realities, and not solely on expected outcomes?

After creation, the care

The period following a creation is often disorienting. A void can appear, a sense of suspension and uncertainty, even exhaustion. This is when care must continue. Accompaniment does not end the moment the work is “brought into the world”. Le Cercle de l’Art, founded by Margaux Derhy, is an inspiring example: a collective of women artists who support one another in developing their artistic journeys and who create tools to live with their art. It was at one of their exhibitions that I discovered Le Phare, a moving work by Caroline Derveaux, born from her own experience of giving birth at the Maternité des Lilas. A creation that bears witness, that heals, that illuminates. That is the magic of encounters.

Towards cultural maieutic

With the support of Ateliers Médicis, Das Relais seeks to develop a new vision of artistic accompaniment. It is not only about producing, exhibiting, performing. It is about creating within a living, supportive, attentive framework. We want to offer spaces for reflection, for crossing disciplines, for the gestation of ideas, and for the transmission of tools, in order to think differently, in a spirit of wellbeing and collective transformation. For a work never comes into the world alone. It arises from a community, it emerges within it, it belongs to it. In a cultural world increasingly precarious, accelerated and competitive, it is urgent to reaffirm a simple conviction: to create is to give life. And that deserves care. So yes, let us bring into culture the most valuable lessons birthing rooms have to teach us: listening, patience, respect for rhythm, and the collective. By carrying forward the legacy of Les Lilas, we are not only preserving a heritage, we are preparing a future where well-birthing inspires wellbeing, and where creation, fully alive, regains its breath.

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