100 Cleft Portraits Tour

The 100 Cleft Portraits Project is a travelling art and education exhibition featuring 100 drawn and painted portraits of people born with cleft from around the world. More than an exhibition, it is a movement to rehumanize how cleft is seen, spoken about, and experienced.

Created by artist and trauma coach Katie Manning, the project:

• Honors the faces and lives of people born with cleft in their full strength, vulnerability, and humanity — beyond diagnosis, surgery, or outcome.

• Bridges the gap between medical care and lived experience, illuminating the emotional, relational, and nervous system realities families navigate alongside treatment.

• Delivers trauma-informed education for parents, clinicians, and communities, deepening understanding of the lifelong impact of cleft diagnosis and repeated medical intervention.

• Creates safe, creative spaces where people born with cleft and their families are seen, heard, and deeply respected — often for the first time.

Originally exhibited in London, the complete collection of 100 portraits will tour the United States in July–August 2026, presented by the American Cleft Palate Craniofacial Association (ACPA).

Because cleft is still too often reduced to a “before and after” medical story, the U.S. tour will:

Educate
Share trauma-informed perspectives with clinicians, nurses, surgeons, therapists, and students — expanding understanding beyond procedures and outcomes.

Validate
Offer parents and caregivers language and frameworks that help them make sense of their lived experiences and nervous system responses.

Celebrate
Honour people born with cleft as whole, complex humans — not as problems that were “fixed” in infancy.

Connect
Build bridges between medical teams and families, fostering care that is grounded, human, and truly collaborative.

The American Cleft Palate Craniofacial Association’s (ACPA) support of the 100 Cleft Portraits Tour brings patient stories to the forefront while advancing its mission of education, advocacy, and ACPA Approved Team care.

Through exhibitions and trauma-informed programming hosted by ACPA Approved Teams in hospitals, clinics, and universities nationwide, the tour helps humanize cleft care and deepen public understanding.

ACPA’s partnership ensures these stories reach more communities, inspire future providers, and strengthen connections across the cleft and craniofacial community.

Your donation helps make this impact possible. Support the tour and help these stories reach even more families and care teams across the country.

Hi, I’m Katie – an artist, trauma-informed coach, and mother to a daughter born with bilateral cleft, married to a man born with unilateral cleft. Cleft is not just something I work with; it’s woven into my family.

Our journey — from diagnosis in Singapore, through surgeries, mental health struggles, and my own deep dive into trauma and the nervous system — is what led me here.

Through my work, I:

• Help parents understand what happens in their bodies when they receive a cleft diagnosis
• Support families to regulate their nervous systems and reconnect with their children and themselves
• Use art to restore reverence for faces that have too often been medicalised, judged, or misunderstood

Learn more about Katie’s work

Follow Katie on Instagram: @thekatiemanning

Each stop on the U.S. tour is intentionally designed to be more than “just an art show.” Every exhibition brings together art, education, and community to create an experience that is immersive, human, and deeply respectful.

The Full 100 Portraits Exhibition

At the heart of each event is a gallery-style installation of all 100 cleft portraits, displayed alongside personal stories and reflections. Together, they invite viewers to see beyond diagnosis and outcome and to encounter real people, real lives, and real humanity.

Trauma-Informed Education

The exhibition is accompanied by trauma-informed presentations exploring cleft, trauma, and the nervous system. These talks are thoughtfully tailored for cleft care teams (including surgeons, nurses, psychologists, orthodontists, and speech and language therapists), as well as for parents, caregivers, and people born with cleft themselves.

Creative Workshops

Creative workshops offer children, teens, and adults a supportive space to explore identity, body stories, and emotional experience through drawing, writing, and other expressive practices — often opening conversations that feel difficult to access in clinical settings.

Community Conversations

Each stop creates space for community conversations, including panel discussions and Q&As with people born with cleft, parents, practitioners, and advocates. These moments foster listening, shared understanding, and connection across lived and professional experience.

Resources & Ongoing Support

Visitors leave with more than inspiration. Each exhibition connects attendees with cleft support organizations, trauma-informed resources, and meaningful ways to stay engaged long after the portraits move on.

There are several meaningful ways to support the 100 Cleft Portraits U.S. Tour and help expand access to trauma-informed cleft education, art, and community connection across the country.

Donate via ACPA

Donations made through the American Cleft Palate Craniofacial Association (ACPA) directly support bringing the exhibition and its trauma-informed workshops to hospitals, clinics, universities, and communities nationwide.

Support the Project Directly

You can also contribute directly to project costs such as shipping, installation, travel, materials, and ensuring community access at each tour stop.

Become a Sponsor

We are seeking aligned partners and sponsors who value community, inclusion, creativity, and trauma-informed care, and who want to play an active role in elevating the visibility of the cleft community.

Partnership opportunities include event or city-level sponsorship, support for creative workshops and educational sessions, coverage of travel and installation costs, and co-branded campaigns.

We also welcome in-kind support, including venues, printing, marketing, or other services that help make the tour possible. Email Katie for more information.

Thank You to Our National Sponsors

Sponsor logos displayed here — contact Charlene Bell about sponsorship opportunities.