A Maker’s Guide to Grief asks the question: how does craft provide solace during bereavement? This topic was investigated through personal observations, and reading others’ accounts, as well as through a series of interviews with experts, craftspeople and respondents (those who experience craft through objects, rather than making) who all have experience of living through significant loss. The approaches adopted by these samples of people were recorded and compared during the project’s analysis phase. Death is still considered a taboo within contemporary, British society, and for those experiencing bereavement, therapy is often not considered necessary. These discoveries were the catalysts for the research, and it was found that a better quality of life is often the result of finding positive ways of connecting with loss. Examples of how others cope with bereavement all proved to involve some form of physical activity or creation. The conclusion of this finding was that it allows the craftspeople and respondents to express their emotions in ways that don’t need to involve: words, eye contact or prior understanding. The aim of the project was to determine what similarities are presented across all recorded coping methods, and therefore enhance our understanding of to what extent craft is a healing process. The study found several factors that determined craft’s effectiveness and advantages during bereavement, and proved there were many similarities between the two processes. The perspective of being a furniture maker, who has experienced significant losses during her lifetime, lead to an interesting insight for the project.
Permanent link to this resource: https://doi.org/10.24384/000508
Speed, Harriet
Year: 2018
© The Author(s) Published by Oxford Brookes University