Truacanta at the Good Life, Good Death, Good Grief Winter Get-together

Truacanta at the Good Life, Good Death, Good Grief Winter Get-together

On 1 December 2022, Good Life Good Death Good Grief held their first in-person conference since 2019. The Winter Get-together was on the theme of Caring, Dying and Grieving: encouraging and supporting action in communities. The Truacanta Project was delighted to be represented in both a plenary presentation, and a breakout session.

The plenary was on the subject of What have we learned about creating compassionate communities? and was presented by Caroline Gibb, manager of the Truacanta Project, and Janet Biggar, of Janet Biggar Research, who are the evaluation coordinators for the project. You can see the presentation slides HERE.

Over forty people signed up to the breakout session, which shows the interest in creating more compassionate

communities in Scotland and further afield. We were delighted to share learning from the Truacanta groups, and lead discussion around Building Compassionate Communities using a visual exercise following the five basic questions: why, who, how, where and what.

We started with the WHY – why are people involved in or interested in compassionate community work? The answers create the foundation that you can then start to build on. The Truacanta representatives all shared their Whys, before delegates shared their thoughts. We then had a foundation we could start building on.

We then moved on to small group discussions and in the groups people shared their thoughts on the questions who, how, where and what:

• The WHO is the people who will benefit from the change and who will drive the change
• The HOW is how to connect and inspire, it is identifying and removing barriers, creating spaces and platforms for people
• The WHERE is what you see down the line, your vague destination, your envisaged change
• The WHAT is the activity that will get you there

The discussions were really lively and energizing and the groups were quickly filling flip chart sheets with their reflections – at the end of the session the walls were covered in pieces of paper!

Delegates were very generous with their sharing and whether people were already involved in compassionate community activity or just thinking about it, there was something useful for everyone.

Before breaking for lunch, people wrote down the next steps that they would be taking after the event, and it was lovely to see how focused people are on taking community action around death, dying, loss and care.

Thanks to the Truacanta groups for helping to plan and deliver the session and to the delegates for their ideas and passion. It bodes well for future compassionate communities.