Dying to talk

The Dying to Talk project emerged out of conversations between the Universities of Bradford and Wolverhampton, the voluntary sector organisations MYMUP, Bradford Bereavement Support, and Child Bereavement UK, and the Bradford-based collective Speaker’s Corner.

With the ethos of creating a Compassionate City, the project seeks to spark conversations and disseminate knowledge about death, dying and bereavement among young people.

Drawing on the AHRC-funded Continuing Bonds project, it uses archaeological case studies as the catalyst for these conversations, in order to showcase diversity in death practices globally and challenge assumptions regarding our own attitudes to death, dying and bereavement.

The Dying to Talk project was funded by the University of Bradford’s Higher Education Innovation Fund.

Dying to Talk is a partnership between archaeologists, bereavement support specialists, psychologists and social policy specialists, as well as young people themselves.

The project was built on the principles of co-production, recognising that young people were best placed to lead in the design and delivery of a project aimed at young people.

From a series of facilitated roundtable discussions, young ambassadors from local secondary schools and undergraduate students from the University developed a video resource exploring the potential of archaeology to open up difficult conversations surrounding death, dying and bereavement.

Festival of the Dead

A ‘Festival of the Dead’ held at the University of Bradford, together with workshops and activity days with local school groups, facilitated the development of other hands-on activities and resources for use by teachers in the classroom or by young people wishing to start conversations and build resilience around topics of death, dying and bereavement with friends and family.

Thank you to all of our ambassadors and to the school groups who attended our ‘Festival of the Dead’.

We hope that you enjoy the resources and that they spark interesting and important conversations!

Support

If you have been affected by any of the topics explored in the Dying to Talk there are a number of local and national groups who can offer sources of support.