Although grief is a universal, human experience, it still remains a taboo subject for many. By focusing on a personal, lived experience of disenfranchised grief, the project aims to open up conversations about death and bereavement, in a manner that destigmatises grief and promotes compassion and understanding.

It will also explore the links between physical and emotional places and how geography interacts with thinking, feeling, materiality, and memory.

The project will focus on Acklam’s long-term project, ‘What it is to be there’, considering its potential for development into practice-based and creative interdisciplinary research.  It will engage in practice as research, investing these ideas through site specific creative activities and also through meetings where the research team reflect on how their experiences and activities engage wider research ideas and questions.

Through a workshop, this ideas exchange project will also develop new partnerships across disciplines and with the wider community with an aim to establish an interdisciplinary working group.

Who are the team and what do they bring?

• Helen Acklam’s (Artist) practice explores ideas and questions emerging from an exploration of the self and identity and the connections between personal experience and larger social and political structures
• Dr Lesel Dawson (University of Bristol) researches into grief and creativity, emotions and adaptive grieving.
• Dr Julian Brigstocke (Cardiff University) has expertise in cultural geography, non-representational theory and creativity, and ideas about thinking as material.

What's next?

The project will establish an interdisciplinary working group with a view to developing further research ideas and grant applications, including ideas for a practice-based research.