Increasing Understanding Shortlist - The Good Grief Festival
Increasing Understanding Shortlist - The Good Grief Festival
We at Good Grief Festival are delighted to be short-listed for a Demystifying Death Award! Thanks for the opportunity to tell you a bit about what we do and why we do it.
What we do – online and in-person
Good Grief Festival offers free virtual events that aim to spark conversations around grief and show that it is a painful but important aspect of human experience which needs to be understood, respected and supported. Good Grief events bring people together to gain insight and knowledge, hear stories they can relate to, and be part of a community. On YouTube,
our Grief Channel offers free and unlimited access to 100+ curated recordings, allowing viewers to create their own grief toolkit and access information, support and solidarity whenever they need it. Since our first festival, we have now welcomed 27k people to our events, with our recordings watched 210k times on Vimeo and YouTube.
Through Good Grief Connects and our work with the Weston-super-Mare Community Network we are also extending our in-person activities; as part of the latter project, from 1st-8th May this year we are holding our first in-person festival, Good Grief Weston, a collaboration between Culture Weston, the University of Bristol and a range of people and organisations across sectors in Weston-super-Mare. In 2023 we will also be launching our new online Grief Hub – watch this space…
How we started
Good Grief was founded in 2020 by Dr Lucy Selman, Associate Professor in Palliative and End of Life Care and the co-lead of the Palliative and End of Life Care Research Group at the University of Bristol. Having experienced the death of her father during her teens and the stillbirth of her daughter Ada in 2018, Lucy is passionate about changing the way society thinks and talks about grief and bereavement. Over the past 4 years she has brought together a huge range of people – members of the public, academics, counsellors, authors, artists and creatives – to collaborate on Good Grief Festival. These include key members of the Good Grief team: Arts and Culture Lead Dr Lesel Dawson (an Associate Professor in University of Bristol’s English Department), Event Director Aisling Mustan and producer Katrin Helene-Deeg.
Challenges and successes
One of the key aims – and challenges – of the festival was to find ways to reach people who wouldn’t normally come to academic or grief-related events and to initiate and sustain an inclusive conversation about death, dying and bereavement. We didn’t want to create a festival which was only relevant to and engaging for white middle-class professionals. From the beginning, we sought to keep our content free and accessible, aiming to offer something for everyone. The diverse programmes we create cover topics from Harry Potter to wild-swimming; feature big names in music, comedy and literature; unpack grief concepts and current research with accessible talks; and target practical issues that affect bereaved people, such as how to manage grief during the holidays. We have also included sessions on forms of grief that are often stigmatised, such as bereavement due to suicide, drug overdose or knife crime.
Why is our work important?
Good Grief embodies a public health approach to end-of-life and bereavement support, aiming to support the public in three key ways:
- Shifting the conversation. Each year in the UK, over 3 million people are bereaved. Yet as a society we continue to struggle with talking about death and grief: in 2022, 32% of UK adults said they didn’t know how to start a conversation after a bereavement, and 60% of bereaved people reported that their community had not helped them deal with their grief. Good Grief aims to provide space for people to reflect on mortality and loss, grow in confidence, and share their experiences.
- Providing information. After a bereavement, many people ask themselves ‘Is this normal?’ Grief can make you feel so many unexpected things – from anger and guilt to a loss of identity – yet these complexities are not often discussed, as if grief is something to be ashamed of. Good Grief works to widen access to research and scholarship and increase knowledge of grief and bereavement, demonstrating along the way that there are many different ways to grieve and to support someone who is grieving.
- Build community. While professional bereavement support can be really helpful, long waiting lists are common and the cost of private counselling is prohibitive for many. There are also known barriers to accessing appropriate support if you are from a minoritised ethnic community or are LGTBQ+. Free, online and open to all, Good Grief welcomes everyone, providing information, inspiration and understanding in a safe and affirming environment which shows us that we are not alone.
You can follow Good Grief on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. We are grateful to all our collaborators and supporters including Good Life, Good Death, Good Grief, and to our funders including the Wellcome Trust, Marie Curie and the National Lottery Foundation.
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