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CREATE
Creative approaches to grief and loss.
We employ creativity and the arts as tools to explore and process grief and loss. We find they're good conversation starters, safe ways to investigate difficult feelings and anyone can take part.
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From creative writing, free downloads, and collaging, we have a lot on offer to support you.
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We also work in partnership with multi-disciplinary artist Annie Frost Nicholson on many of our creative projects, bringing innovative public realm art to life.
FANDANGOE DISCOTECA
Dancing and grief raves
The Fandangoe DISCOTECA takes people to the very last dancefloor of their European dreams, imagining a space where you can shake out your anxiety and grief, unravel your political and climate angst and exist alone but together, bound by the beauty of the dance space. It is an ode to all that’s been lost and retrieved and the unspoken force of the dancefloor, with the unbelievable blessing of Saša himself, who still likes to dance at 81 years old.
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The collaboration between Annie Frost Nicholson and The Loss Project creates alternative spaces to explore, process and acknowledge all intersections of grief and loss. ‘Grief Moves’ enables the joy and hope of the DISCOTECA installation, conceived by Frost Nicholson, and the GRIEF RAVES jointly created and developed, which have been shared with communities across the UK and beyond, touring throughout 2023 and we hope into 2024.
This follows the success of The Fandangoe WHIP and SKIP from 2021-22, which travelled across the country before being commissioned by Arts Brookfield at World Trade Center to encourage the public to share their individual and collective grief over an ice cream. ‘The Grief Raves were phenomenally powerful at the World Trade Center in October and at Canary Wharf last Summer,’ says the duo. ‘Our team of professionals were able to create a feeling of safety and warmth for collective grief on the dancefloor, bringing people from all walks of life together to share memories of their loved ones over music.’
Similarly to both the Fandangoe Whip and the Skip, The Loss Project focuses on integrating a diverse and nuanced programme into the installation itself, encouraging audiences to reflect upon questions of both intimacy and release that a good dance space will cultivate, bringing us home to safety and forming inevitable bonds between dancing and our individual and collective mental health. We truly encourage visitors to shake out their day, their week, their lives, freely, in a safe space, with no judgement, underscored by good dose of Italo Disco.
GRIEF RAVES
Dancing to remember
‘Grief Moves’ enables the joy and hope of the DISCOTECA installation to be shared with communities across the UK and beyond, touring throughout 2023. It follows the 'Grief Raves' initial success; a Grief Rave brings people together via music, inviting the public to come and play songs that remind them of those they have loved and lost. 'Grief Moves', brings together our expertise, inviting the public to come and shake out their grief on the dance floor, releasing climate, political, or socio-economic angst with the space to collectively remember the loss of loved ones.
‘The Grief Raves were phenomenally powerful at World Trade Center in October and at Canary Wharf this Summer,’ says Nicholson. ‘Our team of professionals were able to create a feeling of safety and warmth for collective grief on the dancefloor, bringing people from all walks of life together to share memories of their loved ones over music.’
Founder of The Loss Project, Carly shares "the Grief Moves tour is a fundamental part of our collaboration to bring dance and movement, as tools to process and explore grief in all of its forms. It enables us to reconnect with our bodies using non-verbal ways to express our grief. Both Annie and I, have wanted to bring together a dance floor that centres grief for many years Individually, and It's an honour to be able to bring this to life together with this collaboration".
‘The dancefloor has been a space of silence and safety as I have navigated the many great losses and painful grief in my life throughout the past decade,’ explains collaborator Nicholson, ‘and having successfully installed public realm projects around grief and mental health over the past two years, we have noticed a distinct change in how people wish to connect and come together. There is an overwhelming need to shake out your grief physically right now.’
THE FANDANGOE SKIP
Alternative spaces to explore grief, loss + mental health
The Fandangoe Skip was a collaboration project which we were a part of alongside, artist Annie Nicholson, AKA The Fandangoe Kid, the Skip Gallery and Caukin Studio. The project, a community arts installation, sought to smash the taboos around grief, loss, and mental health, using a converted skip, but with the added twist of providing free ice cream (provided by the brilliant Portuguese Love Affair in Hackney), chats and a whole host of creative workshops and talks curated by The Loss Project. The Skip was in situ in Greenwich Peninsula Square and in Canary Wharf in July and August. It then moved to New York in the Autumn.
One of our favourite moments among many was the mini grief rave, hosted by the fabulous Nick from @streetsoundsystem we spun some tunes and danced together with strangers to remember those we'd loved and lost. It felt like a collective boost of joyful energy, and seeing people who had never met throw some shapes and show each other such care and kindness really reminded me of how important it is to tend to joy when experiencing any kind of grief or loss.
The Fandangoe Skip *on tour*
We were delighted to be commissioned by Brookfield Place to take the project to NYC in October. A similar premise with ice cream from @bluemarblebk and another jam packed programme with some amazing facilitators including Reiki, Beyonce dancing, patterns of the city, letters that have never been sent and loads more.
Not only is the skip (or dumpster if you're stateside) a beautiful piece of art, it also goes to show how everyday objects can be turned into something that can support people with grief and loss.
Why are ice cream and alternative spaces important?
One of the reasons why we have loved being a part of this collaboration is because it brings together all of the things we think are important when tending to grief and loss. An opportunity to find different rituals, ways of being together and exploring what is often a really complex experience. Ice cream was a conduit to encouraging people to come and chat to us, and offered an invitation in a very friendly way to help people to share their own stories.
The brilliant work of The Fandangoe Kid, Skip Gallery and Caukin Studios in creating these alternative spaces are also key. People were taken aback that we had used a skip/dumpster to create something so beautiful and joyful. Tending to difficult times and emotions doesn't have to be in a clinical setting, with strip lights, dodgy music and still life paintings of fruit on the wall. It can be joyful, candy coloured and a work of art.
The project enabled us to bring a whole heap of disciplines, philosophies and creative mediums together to show what is possible in this alternative space of acknowledging and exploring grief and loss. It doesn't have to be something scary or overwhelming, it can give life.
WORKSHOPS AND PRODUCTS
Creative tools
We've hosted a range of creative workshops including creative writing, collaging in memory, drawing, mindfulness as well as some of our products that are downloadable from our shop.
