This workshop offers a discussion and a practical experiential activity for those living through and with grief, and for those working with clients who are exploring grief.
Understanding grief and recognising its multifaceted meanings and visible and material occurrences, in daily life, can support an openness to vulnerability and courage. This workshop invites the potential of memories and objects to be vessels for hope and healing, honouring an evolving process with which we cohabit and through which to experience life and loss.
Informed by therapeutic arts practices and posthumanism, this workshop engages the power of place, welcoming memories and material stories, and transgressing the limits of language in making sense of grief.
Course Content
Presenter

Dr. Francesca Bernardi PhD is an advocate, author, coach, and artist, with expertise in MA supervision, dis/ability and community engagement. Francesca has an extensive background as a teacher and artist-in-residence, working with children and adults in various settings, including schools, alternative provision, further and higher education, corporate settings, museums, and public spaces (Tate Museums and the RSA.org). She’s dedicated to working with parents and caregivers of children and young people with dis/abilities who have experienced school exclusions and other forms of social discrimination.
Francesca engages in multi-disciplinary and arts-informed practices with marginalized communities, and individuals experiencing loss and homelessness. Her approach is non-hierarchical, socially just, and creative, aiming to nourish healing and personal agency while honouring the wholeness of individuals’ personhood, choices, and capabilities.
Francesca has published her work on autism, arts-informed methodologies, childhood, and children’s rights in books and journals (Bloomsbury, Routledge, Taylor and Francis). She is the founding chair of the Antonio Gramsci Society UK, board member of the Disability Without Abuse Project (2020-), and an Associate Member of CATA/ACAT (the Canadian Art Therapy Association 2021-).