Event takes thoughtful look at death and bereavement
After a turbulent year the Good Grief Festival will return virtually to support thousands of people who have lost loved ones.
The virtual festival - which includes members of the University of Bath’s Centre for Death & Society - returns this month with new events, activities and a line-up of speakers.
The event is free to attend and takes place over two days from March 27 to 28 and explores the many faces of grief and bereavement through a series of talks and activities.
Contributors include members of Bath’s Centre for Death & Society (CDAS) and over 150 speakers including international grief expert David Kessler, Julia Samuel MBE, rap artist Guvna B and comedians James Acaster, Seann Walsh and Ed Gamble.
The programme combines practical help and insight alongside a creative line-up of events exploring love and loss, including: What Harry Potter Teaches us about Grief, Reflections on Death and Dying, The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times, Finding Your Grief Tribe, and The Grief Gift: Finding Meaning and Purpose after Loss.
Dr John Troyer, CDAS Bath Director who has collaborated with the festival organisers to bring together the programme, speaks on Sunday, discussing AIDS and what we could and should have learned from that pandemic.
He said: “The Aids epidemic became an inescapable reference point for me personally this past year. Government responses to Covid-19 consistently used decision making that seemed to wholly ignore many of the lessons learned during the early decade of AIDS. Indeed, across the Covid pandemic it was like AIDS had never happened at all, and that compelled me to begin giving talks on the history of AIDS - which still remains a global pandemic - during Covid19.
“I want to believe that all the people who died from AIDS died for a reason and that their deaths helped create new ways of understanding how to grieve during a plague.”
For more information and to buy tickets, visit goodgrieffest.com.