This Grief Thing

This Grief Thing is a participatory arts project by Central’s Associate Artist Fevered Sleep, led by David Harradine and Sam Butler.

At the heart of the project is a collection of clothing and accessories that incorporate words and phrases about grief, such as “Grief is like the weather”, “Grief = Love” , “Don’t panic if I cry” or “Hold me”. These propose new ways to think about grief and to communicate it. These objects are distributed via temporary shops which also function as spaces for Grief Gatherings, which invite small groups of people to spend time talking together about grief, sharing experience and learning. These gatherings also take place in other community settings (to date, in libraries, hospitals and various arts centres and online during the 2020 COVID-19 lockdowns). A highly visible billboard campaign makes grief even more visible in public spaces. Asking the question “Can we talk about grief?”, the billboard gently reminds people that, generally, we cannot.

Historically articulated and experienced in social, relational ways, grief has been rendered largely absent from public, social settings by shifts in societal attitudes to public expression of grief, following two World Wars, developments in medical technologies and consequent disengagement with death. This has resulted in a lack of developed skills for communicating about grief, with recognised impacts on health and wellbeing. This Grief Thing renders grief visible, through material cultures, through social encounters and by interventions in public space, and develops new partnership and participation models for engaging all sorts of people with grief, helping build resilience in individuals, families and communities.

This Grief Thing was developed through an extended collaborative and participatory research process (2015 – 2018) which has included collaboration and/or exchange with academic researchers across disciplines, including:

• Bereavement studies (with Dr. Linda Machin at Keele University)
• Death studies (with Dr. John Troyer and Dr. Christine Valentine in the University of Bath’s Centre for Death and Society)
• Geography (with Professor Louise Crewe at Nottingham University), and
• The history of fashion (with Professor Amy de la Haye at London College of Fashion: the project’s focus on clothing is, in part, a contemporary reimagining of Victorian mourning clothes).  

Alongside this academic research, over 100 people from outside academia took part in small group discussions about grief, which led directly to the creation of the texts and phrases that are incorporated in the items available in the shop.

This Grief Thing shops have opened in Preston with Derelict Live (September 2018); Middlesbrough with Middlesbrough Town Hall (September 2018); in Manchester with Whitworth Art Gallery (November 2018) and Sick! Festival (October 2019) and in Nottingham with Dance4 (March 2019).  Grief Gatherings have been hosted by Manchester Royal Infirmary, Compton Verney Art Gallery, Shoreditch Town Hall, Yorkshire Dance, South Street Arts Centre and the Banff Centre for the Arts and Creativity in Canada. 

In  June 2021 an extensive programme will take place across London, in collaboration with multiple arts, community and local authority partners.  

This Grief Thing is funded by Paul Hamlyn Foundation (as part of a 4-year research project on participatory art-making), by Wellcome Trust (as part of a 5-year project on innovative approaches to engaging people with biomedical science), and through Fevered Sleep’s National Portfolio Organisation funding from Arts Council England.

More information

To learn more about this project, please visit www.thisgriefthing.com and read an article featuring the project in iNews.

More information

To learn more about this project, please visit Fevered Sleep’s website and read an article featuring the project in iNews.