The grief therapist

The Fandangoe Kid

Artist Annie Nicholson channels her own experiences with grief into pop-up artworks that help people find new ways of tackling mental-health issues

Few people understand grief better than graphic artist Annie Nicholson, who goes by the moniker The Fandangoe Kid. In 2011, she lost several members of her immediate family in a tragic helicopter accident in New York. The experience completely changed her approach to creativity, which became an important outlet for her to process her emotions. ‘There were no platforms for me to explore my grief, so my sketchbooks became an essential way of navigating it,’ she explains. When the pandemic hit, Nicholson found herself thinking about these experiences of loss and isolation, and how she could use her artwork as a way of supporting others going through difficult times. Together with Carly Attridge, founder of grief-support charity The Loss Project, she took to the road in a customised ice-cream van (pictured top) that invited people to open up about their mental-health struggles while enjoying a mintchoc chip. ‘The idea was to facilitate spaces for dialogue, rather than come up with a prescriptive idea of what it is to grieve,’ she says.

The second iteration of the project saw Nicholson team up with architects Caukin Studio on a custom-built version called the Fandangoe Skip (pictured right), which combined Nicholson’s candy-coloured graphics with built-in seating spaces. Now, the artist offers people a different outlet for their grief. The Fandangoe Discoteca is a 1960s-inspired dance kiosk that will host ‘grief raves’. ‘We found people have moved on from being really desperate to talk to wanting to shake it out,’ she says. fandangoekid.com ‘The idea was to facilitate spaces for dialogue, rather than come up with a prescriptive idea of what it is to grieve’