Voicing Loss is the next phase in our work to support people experiencing grief and bereavement through music.
We’ve experienced first-hand the remarkable impact ensemble singing can have on those affected by loss.
Our work in this area began during the pandemic in 2020 when people were losing loved ones suddenly and often without opportunities to say goodbye. Funerals, memorials or other ceremonies were also severely limited due to the strict regulations at the time. For most people, these bereavement rituals are vital parts of processing the death of a loved one and as the pandemic wore on, the lack of space for shared expressions of loss soon contributed to a crises in complex and unresolved grief.
You can find out more about the impact of covid on grief and bereavement in this report by the National Centre for Social Research.
Singing together is often a central part of ceremonies that celebrate a person’s life and form a key part of the rituals of loss which were so strongly curtailed during the pandemic. We wanted to do something to respond to this crisis and between 2020-2021, we developed our Rite to Grieve pilot project in partnership with Ellie Harrison and The Grief Series with support from the Paul Hamlyn Foundation.
Alongside developing a new community workshop format, we commissioned composer Rebecca Dale to write a new piece for the project. My North was premiered at a commemorative ceremony at the National Covid Memorial Wall in March 2022.
Fast forward to 2024 and we were invited for a Creative Health residency at Britten Pears Arts in Suffolk, where we developed our ideas with a range of practitioners working across music therapy and clinical psychology. You can find out more about the residency here.
The result was Voicing Loss, a new version of our workshop format with an increased focus on the breath as a tool for grounding oneself and helping to calm the onset of strong emotions. Gentle vocal exercises have also been incorporated throughout the workshop to encourage participants to explore using their voices to release tension while also creating a choral soundscape with others in the group, building peer-to-peer connection through sound.
The residency was followed by two pilot sessions at St Elizabeth Hospice and Snape Maltings in September 2024 and we will return to the hospice in March 2025 for a workshop specially designed for the amazing people who work there.
