A series of ‘Grief Gatherings’ aiming to address the silence around grieving will be taking place online in September.
Organised by arts company Fevered Sleep, the Grief Gatherings previously took place in their pop-up shop This Grief Thing. Since 2018 the shop has toured up and down the UK, selling items like T-shirts, badges and tote bags designed with slogans to help people start conversations about grief. The purpose of the gatherings was to encourage people to open up about their grief, and also learn how to support someone they know who is grieving.
With the shop unable to open due to the pandemic, the meetings will be held online, following a virtual pilot in July that had a generous group of attendees who gave positive feedback.
Hosted by the artistic directors of Fevered Sleep, Sam Butler and David Harradine, the meetings are free to attend and last around an hour and a half. “We’re living at a time when many people find death and grief – our own grief or other people’s – almost impossible to talk about” they said in a statement. “We don’t know what to say, what to do, or how to act. So we stay silent, we pretend that grief doesn’t exist, or we hide it.
“We’re really keen to hear from all sorts of people about how easy or difficult they find it to talk about their own or other people’s grief. There is no obligation to talk, you’re welcome to just sit and listen.”
The company recently launched an Instagram page called Permission To Grieve for people to post their responses to grief.
To register for an event visit their Eventbrite page
Read our interview with artistic director David Harradine here
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