All members of the public are invited to participate in a creative, informal consultation on how we can support inclusive and supportive initiatives around death literacy and palliative care in the Exeter area. This may sound like a sombre topic, but we hope the consultation will be positive and productive, offering our increasingly diverse community an opportunity to ensure that local palliative care supports different worldviews, spiritual needs, and expectations around the end-of-life journey. The results of the consultation will be used to inform approaches to local hospice care and death literacy initiatives.
What to expect on the day
The event will be run as a drop-in, so you are welcome to come at any point between 14:30 and 17:30 and stay as long as you like. You can help yourself to light refreshments when you arrive.
We will use a range of creative techniques -- including storytelling, collaging, drawing, painting, and poetry-writing -- to facilitate reflection and feedback. No previous experience with creative expression is required, and we are happy to just have a one-to-one chat if you prefer!
All contributions are welcome, but we are particularly interested in:
- memories associated with receiving, or watching friends/family receive, support from Hospiscare or other palliative care providers
- descriptions of what sorts of spaces, rituals, and activities support wellbeing during difficult times
- stories about what makes a 'good life' and a 'good death'
- discussions about whether/how you have discussed end-of-life care with friends and family
- explanations about what makes you feel included and appreciated when you are using communal spaces
- what interactions and support mechanisms are most helpful when dealing with grief and bereavement
How we will use your contributions
At the workshop, you will be offered an opportunity to sign a consent form so that we can include your insights in a formal dataset that may ultimately inform academic publications and conference presentations (you can see on of our previous presentations here, for context). However, this is not required for you to participate in the workshop; we can still consider your experiences and opinions informally, and use this information to shape our practices. You are welcome to take any of the creative outputs you make on the day, contribute them to our dataset or exhibition, or even throw them away!
Further context
Many of the activities we will be using been co-designed by Hospiscare and University of Exeter staff as part of the Creative Toolkit initiative. We have also previous run a death cafe-style event called Creative Remembrance, where we used creative interventions to support people experiencing grief and bereavement. Some of the resulting pieces can be found in our online exhibition. Both this event and last year's Creative Remembrance workshop are part of the nationwide Festival of Social Sciences, funded by the ESRC.
