Conference Agenda

Workshop Objective: A key aspect of a public health approach to palliative and end-of-life care is supporting communities to have conversations and learn more about death, dying, grief and bereavement, and reducing inequities in access to knowledge, information, and support. Festivals can help achieve these aims, offering different ‘ways in’ to these topics via participatory, creative, educational, and cultural events and activities. In this workshop, the organisers of three different festivals will share learning on different models of festivals and the challenges and opportunities inherent in their development and implementation. Qualitative and quantitative data on the reach and impact of these festivals will be presented. The objective is to encourage the audience to consider the utility of these approaches and exchange ideas for future endeavours aimed at enhancing community engagement with serious illness, death, and bereavement.

Target audience: The workshop is open to anyone interested in the development of festivals as part of a public health approach.

Structure of the workshop

1) Getting to Know Each Other

• Who is in the room?

2) Presentation of Three Case Studies:

• To Absent Friends, a Scotland-wide festival of storytelling and remembrance which has taken place annually since 2014. The festival aims to give people an excuse to remember, to tell stories, to celebrate and to reminisce about people we love who have died.
• Good Grief Festival, an online and in-person festival founded in 2020 which has now engaged over 30,000 people. The festival aims to engage people in research and scholarship related to grief, bereavement and end-of-life care, and to widen access to support and information.
• The Compassionate Week, held for the first time in November 2023, at Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), Belgium, aimed to foster meaningful engagement among students and staff on profound subjects such as serious illness, death, and bereavement through various activities.

3) Plenary Discussion: Reflection on case studies – pitfalls, challenges, and opportunities.

• How do we engage community members?
• What other initiatives could be developed and implemented during a festival on this topic?
• How can similar festivals be implemented in other countries, workplaces, educational institutions? What adaptations are necessary?
• Experiences and questions from the audience

4) Closing

• Summary of main lessons learned, where to go for more information and support

There is an expression that community organizers flirt with in hopes it will be true: If you build it, they will come. We had this experience – both the hope and then the success – when we built and delivered Good Grief, Nova Scotia! (GGNS), a festival to grow grief literacy across an entire Canadian province in 2023.

Nova Scotia is home to 1 million people, many living in rural and semi-urban communities. GGNS was the first festival in Canada to bring the topic of grief into public view. Across 8 days, we hosted 36 events both virtually and in person. Advertising included social media, posters, radio and television engagement. Activities embraced the tenets of grief literacy in the following ways:

- They were tailored to different ages, communities, genders, sexualities, incomes, and geographic locations. Many events were on-line. Most events were physically accessible, and at least one had sign language interpretation.

- They included a range of griefs. For example, widows grieving their spouses; pet owner grieving their companions; newcomers reflecting on what they had to leave behind in their home countries.

- They were in public places: For example, the main library in the provincial capital hosted a display of memorial tattoo photographs; people talked about their grief over restaurant meals; folks gathered in a park to learn about death doulas; people joined online to discuss estate planning; grievers missing their deceased pets went on hikes together.

- They were hosted by individuals, community organizations, health care institutions, faith-based organizations, and research teams. Most events were free; some had ‘pay what you can’ entry fees.

o Target Audience

This workshop is for anyone who would like to contribute to growing grief literacy in their networks and communities.

o Learning Objectives

• To learn about building a successful grief literacy festival using crowd-sourced content;
• To share ideas for tailoring grief literacy activities to participants’ communities;
• To discuss meaningful evaluation metrics, asking: What is a marker of success for grief literacy?

o Structure of the Workshop (90 min)

• Introductions (10 min)
• Presentation about Good Grief, Nova Scotia! (15 min)
• Break-out groups to brainstorm and discuss the following:

- Ideas, challenges, and solutions for events and activities (20 min with reporting back to larger group)

- Ideas for evaluation (20 min with reporting back to larger group)

• Large group discussion (20 min)
• Concluding remarks (5 min)