By Dr James Robb, Academic Clinical Fellow and Professor Lucy Selman, Palliative and End of Life Care Research Group, University of Bristol.

Almost all of us will experience the grief associated with bereavement, yet as a society we often struggle to talk about it. We have been working with the community of Weston-super-Mare to design and run Good Grief Weston, a festival to improve knowledge and support for local people. Our evaluation of the first festival, held in 2023, has now been published. As we gear up for Good Grief Weston 2024 in October (registrations are now live), we reflect here on the impact of the festival.

People often feel unsupported by their community after the death of a loved one. Moreover, experiences of grief and bereavement are unequal. People living in the UK’s most deprived areas – like Weston-super-Mare – are less likely to receive adequate care and support during serious illness or bereavement, and are more likely to experience social isolation and loneliness.

However, creative and arts engagement are effective ways of tackling inequities and reducing social isolation, and previous festivals have helped people to feel more comfortable discussing death, bereavement and grief.

We therefore co-designed a week long festival about grief and bereavement that took place 1-8 May in Weston-super-Mare. The festival was produced by Super Culture in conjunction with the Weston-super-Mare Community Network, and funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council as part of a project focused on harnessing community assets to tackle inequities and reduce social isolation in end-of-life care and bereavement. Super Culture curated a diverse array of creative activities and events, involving community organisations, cultural groups, charities and members of the public.

We aimed to provide something for everyone, building on the evaluation of the first Good Grief Festival, which took place online during the Covid-19 pandemic. Good Grief Weston events included creative arts sessions (such as commemorative clay tile and memorial flower making), music and poetry recitals, talks and discussions (e.g. with Michael Rosen), wellbeing sessions (such as yoga, a men’s cooking group and synchronised swimming), and even a grief rave on the High Street!

During and after the festival we invited attendees to complete surveys and feedback cards. Academic members of the team trained members of the community in supporting audience members to provide feedback, and how to conduct focus groups. After the festival, the community researchers conducted two focus groups to help us gain greater insight into people’s experiences.

Around 3000 people attended the festival. People were from a broad range of social backgrounds; nearly two-thirds were women. Most attendees rated the festival as ‘excellent’ and found it entertaining, inspiring, informative and useful for finding out about local support. Many reported feeling part of a like-minded community and spoke to new people, including about their experiences of bereavement. One attendee wrote:

“It’s wonderful to have events that encourage you to think about your losses and that help you feel like it’s ok to think about them. It can be very difficult to discuss grief in our society, which is weird because everyone has experienced it … It’s beautiful to be able to shed a tear with someone without feeling silly or ashamed, sharing a feeling, which is very personal, but also very shared and familiar…”

Some people found that the events prompted powerful emotions, but that they were supported by other attendees and by ‘listening people’, mainly from Weston Hospicecare, who were stationed throughout the festival to provide support.

Local people also expressed the value of a large cultural event in Weston-super-Mare, and held hope that it could draw in visitors and help to revitalise the area:

“Things like this just never happen in Weston. It’s such a forgotten about place so I think it’s really important for things like this to happen here.” [Focus group participant]

Overall, our evaluation of the festival has shown that Good Grief Weston was effective at fostering community, building connections between individuals and organisations, and spreading learning and conversations about grief and bereavement. Learning from the evaluation will be incorporated into future festivals.

Further research will need to look at whether grief festivals are effective in other settings, as well as how they fit in with existing approaches to reducing inequality. Exploring the experiences of marginalised groups in greater depth is also a vital step in tackling inequality.

Links to associated resources:

Register for Good Grief Weston 2024 events: https://superculture.org.uk/whats-on/

Published evaluation of Good Grief Weston 2023: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/26323524241274175

Good Grief Festival: goodgrieffest.com

The Palliative and End of Life Care Research Group: https://www.bristol.ac.uk/population-health-sciences/projects/palliative-end-of-life-care/