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, FRSA, MA, QTS), is a creative facilitator and coach, community artist, writer and advocate. She trained in Art and Design education and therapy and has worked as a teacher and artist-in-residence in schools, alternative provision and further education. She most consistently engages in multi-disciplinary research, setting up creative environments for critical participatory work with marginalised communities. Francesca has published international research on arts-informed methodologies, autism, childhood and children’s rights; is founding chair of the Antonio Gramsci Society UK, international board member of the Disability Without Abuse Project (Los Angeles), Councillor and Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (RSA) and Associate Member of CATA (Canadian Art Therapy Association). Francesca is a Visiting Lecturer in Childhood Studies and Research Methods at the Carnegie School of Education (Leeds Beckett University) and Arts Therapies at the University of Roehampton, Francesca is also a translator (Queen’s University Belfast; Routledge).
