Exploring the Role of Collaborative Creativity in Grief Processing

All of us will experience grief in our lifetimes. With counselling services increasingly over-subscribed, there is a turn towards social prescribing initiatives and growing pressure to find new ways to support bereaved people.

Funded by the Bristol Inspired Research Challenge Areas 23/24 scheme, this interdisciplinary project aims to investigate the benefits and risks of making art after bereavement and consider how supportive group settings affect grief processing. Focusing on two forms of creativity (storytelling and singing) and bringing together researchers from across disciplines, the project's interrelated strands will coalesce to enhance and expand our dataset from our previous studies in this area and test novel methodologies for supporting bereaved people. The findings will be shared in two academic articles, a process report, a Good Grief Festival panel, and the PI’s monograph. Culminating in a roundtable discussing next steps, the project will contribute to our wider aim of establishing a centre for grief, bereavement and loss at the University of Bristol.