Seed paper and poetry, a way to grow your own words. Grow your memories, even grow your art.
Workshops that talk about difficult subject matters such as loss can at times be difficult to run. This is because we view death as unpleasant, conversations about funerals make people uncomfortable. A big aim with my whole project is to begin to break down these barriers as; if we confront death in the every day, when we in turn are confronted with loss we can lean on healthier coping mechanisms.
When Jay Hampton and I first approached Southport flower show our initial plan was to bring the DIY memorial kit to. We began to prepare for this by collecting and sorting seeds and making the seed paper.
Southport flower show made a sudden change to our plans and we ended up with very limited time frame to make an event that would work for their audience. This made us change our proposal to instead host a poetry workshop.
Getting people to engage with their losses is difficult and the setting of Southport flower would have been a great place to start talking about the rewilding of cemeteries but how do you get an audience excited about poetry?
Using a mix of seed paper to educate about wildflowers we started to plan a workshop where people can come, sit, talk about the memorial seed mixes and if they wished to; use the seed mix to create poetry to take home and plant.
Although this event was cancelled last minuet this is something I feel would land well in a multitude of settings and would enable engagements with people of all ages. We have had great feedback on the proposals from the event organisers and from members of the public and we are planning to host this event in the near future.
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