Ms Kirsten Baker

• Registrant with Nursing and Midwifery Council (Midwife and Midwife Teacher) 
• Registrant with Nursing and Midwifery Council of Malawi
• Member of Royal College of Midwives 
• Contributor to Arts Health and Wellbeing All Party Parliamentary group 

Conference presentations:  

• 2013 ‘I’ll Get Back to You’ (with Progress Theatre) at Normal Birth Conference, Grange over Sands
• 2011 ‘Risky Business’ (with Progress Theatre) at Risk Colloquium hosted by Normal Birth conference and Royal College of Midwives
• 2011 ‘Not There’ (dramatic duologue) at Child Law Conference, University of the West of England
• 2010 ‘Exploring students’ understanding of normality’ at Normal Birth Conference, Vancouver
• 2010 ‘Up To Here’ (with Dramatic Voices) at Reflective Practice Conference, University of Luton

I am a Senior Technical Adviser with Women4Health, a project run by a consortium which includes Save the Children UK and DAI. The project aims to increase the number of female students in Health Training Institutes in northern Nigeria, with the ovararching aim of improving maternal and neonatal outcomes.  

Prior to embarking on midwifery I graduated from the University of Exeter with a degree in English and Drama, and I now combine these two elements, drama and midwifery, with my directorship of a midwifery theatre group called Progress Theatre. We use a form of theatre based on the work of a South American dramaturge Augusto Boal - forum theatre - to facilitate debate and analysis of familiar aspects of clinical life. Our shows are devised using our own and other midwives' experiences, and entail a high level of interaction and participation with audience members. I have also facilitated the development of two shows by service users, working with a Consultant Midwife and a National Teaching Fellow respectively.  I also frequently use drama with students to explore physiology, and to examine communication and culture in maternity care.  

In 2016 I took a career break and lived and worked in rural Malawi, helping to deliver a skilled birth attendant training programme alongside Malawian coleagues.  

I was External Examiner for the midwfery programmes at the University of Bradford between 2007 and 2011, and Canterbury Christ Church University between 2012 and 2016.  

I wrote about my time in Malawi here:  kirstenbsite.wordpress.com