News

University designers produce tiny mementoes

Published 16 May 2013

Researchers at the University of Brighton have created a unique pair of baby booties from donated breast milk to mark World Breast Milk Donation Day.

Academics and designers Nick Gant and Tanya Dean, both lecturers in the university's Faculty of Arts, worked with Gillian Weaver, manager of the milk bank at Queen Charlotte's & Chelsea Hospital, London, and chair of the UK Association for Milk Banking's national forum, to create the booties from a protein in breast milk. Using the simplest of kitchen equipment, they transformed the protein into a hard plastic type material and moulded it into the booties.

The first pair of booties will be presented to a specially selected donor to mark World Breast Milk Donation Day on Sunday 19 May as a memento of the donor's potentially life-saving gift.

The milk bank, which is run by Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, is the longest continually operating bank in the world. It provides specially heat-treated breast milk collected from volunteer donor mothers for use in feeding sick and premature babies.

To make the booties, Nick and Tanya used breast milk which could not be used for donation and would otherwise have been discarded. The booties are part of Nick and Tanya's Sole-Searching Project which has seen them make shoes from a whole range of unusual waste materials.

The baby booties made from breast milk

Nick said: "The aim is to highlight the importance of breast milk donation, and more broadly to challenge people's perceptions about so-called waste products. We want to show that they can be used to raise awareness and communicate issues about material culture, ethics and sustainability. Turning waste material like this breast milk which couldn't otherwise be used, but which is embedded with meaning and personal history, into something new, gives the products created greater meaning and value."

Gillian said: "Seeing these tiny booties made from breast milk is a unique reminder of the valuable role that breast milk plays in helping premature babies to survive and grow. The booties highlight the importance of milk banks in supplying donated breast milk when mothers are unable to provide enough of their own."