About the Creative Dissemination Project
Wetwang Slack chariot burial, © Aaron Watson, Melanie Giles.
Following on from the Continuing Bonds study was the Creative Dissemination project. As a result of follow-on funding for Impact and Engagement awarded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the Creative Dissemination project continued with the original drive to normalise death, dying, bereavement and grief in contemporary society. To do this, stories, experiences and opinions given in the original workshops together with archaeological materials were used as inspiration for creative writing and poetry. We looked at themes like keeping the dead close, the politics of death, and remembering and memorialising through objects.
The project ran for 9 months and was led by Principal Investigator Dr Karina Croucher (University of Bradford) and Co-Investigators Dr Jennie Dayes (University of Bradford) and Dr Melanie Giles (University of Manchester). Participants were invited to three creative writing workshops and to contribute to an anthology and celebration event.
The anthology and workshop materials are free to download from our website, see ‘Creative Dissemination Outputs’, to encourage others to hold similar writing events, write about death, dying and grief issues, and to engage an even wider audience on the topic.
What’s already happened?
Workshops were held in Bradford, Sheffield and Manchester throughout the months of March, April and June 2019. Participants were asked to attend all three workshops in their chosen city.
We collated individuals’ pieces into an anthology The Living and the Dead: Creative Conversations between Past and Present which was printed in September 2019 and is available to download from our website – see ‘Creative Dissemination Outputs’. We celebrated individuals’ contributions in reading events at the end of September/beginning of October 2019 and had a wonderful time hearing authors read and share their work. Thank you to all who attended and made the events as moving and enjoyable as they were.
Karina, Mel and Jennie drawing the Manchester Celebration Event to a close.
What’s still to happen?
We are collating our data and intend to write this into an academic article so we can share our experiences, process and the feedback we had from out attendees with the academic community (and whomever enjoys reading journal articles!).
We hope that individuals will be inspired to run their own creative writing workshops using our teaching materials, or write further pieces, and will share how they got on with us (by emailing continuingbonds@bradford.ac.uk)/.
We will continue to update our social media plaforms: (@CBondsStudy on Twitter #ContinuingBonds; Continuing Bonds on Facebook; Creative Dissemination on Instagram #CBCreativeDissemination and Continuing Bonds on Pinterest), or our websites (www.continuingbonds.live; https://www.brad.ac.uk/life-sciences/arch-sci/research/continuing-bonds/ )
Continuing Bonds:Follow On
Continuing Bonds 