New national event to unlock the UK’s untapped maternal talent pool

Beyondtheschoolrun and The Open University are putting motherhood and work on the same stage with a new national event: Where Motherhood Becomes Mumentum. It takes place on Tuesday 13 October 2026 at One Churchill Place in Canary Wharf, with a hybrid format across the UK. The pitch is simple but pointed: motherhood is not a pause in a career, it’s an evolution of it.

The event is set up around a familiar problem that still gets dressed up as common sense. Women are often told to “return” to work, confidence, careers, even to themselves, as if motherhood left them somewhere else. This event wants to flip that script and focus on what becomes possible when mothers are given the space and support to grow.

The agenda is broad but clearly aimed at the modern workplace problem set. Sessions will touch motherhood and identity, the future of work, AI and future skills, entrepreneurship, lifelong learning, inclusive leadership, and corporate change. Louise Webster, founder of Beyondtheschoolrun and WeAreBeyond, said motherhood can be a time to reconnect with ambition and unlock potential, but only if the environment is right.

The Open University is bringing its Mumentum campaign into the event. That campaign, launched in October 2024, is built to help mothers and primary caregivers keep moving forward in learning and work through flexible, affordable study. It also includes two toolkits, one for employers and one for parents, created by academics at The Open University Business School and published with the Department for Work and Pensions. Those toolkits are now in active use across more than 650 Jobcentre Plus locations in Great Britain, with parallel distribution through the Department for Communities in Northern Ireland.

There’s a business case threaded through all of it. Keith Schofield, executive dean of the Faculty of Business & Law, pointed to The Open University’s recent Business Barometer report, which found that 57% of organisations have skills shortages. The event is meant to push employers toward wider talent pools, while also making the case that parental inclusion should be standard practice, not a nice extra.