The Bristol Centre for Grief Research and Engagement encourages and supports cross-sector and inter-disciplinary collaboration to generate research and outputs that are relevant, inclusive and impactful. Members have worked with health and social care workers, VCSE organisations, artists, psychotherapists, and members of the public on a range of collaborative and creative projects about grief, loss and bereavement. At the University of Bristol, the Centre has close links with the Palliative and End-of-Life Care Research Group, the Centre for Academic Primary Care, the Centre for Ethics in Medicine and the Centre for Health Humanities and Science.
If you would like to get in touch about collaborating, please email us at grief-centre@bristol.ac.uk.
Cross-sector collaborations
Lucy Selman, Lesel Dawson and Alice Malpass are currently collaborating across sectors and with the communities of Blackpool, Hastings and Weston-super-Mare on the Coastal Community & Creative Health Project, a multi-centre study to help tackle health inequalities, which includes a strand on serious illness and bereavement (£2.44M, AHRC, 2024-2027). The project builds on previous AHRC-funded work to establish the Weston-super-Mare Community Network and run the first Good Grief Weston festival in 2023.
Good Grief Festival, our social enterprise focused on public engagement and education, has collaborated with a huge number of individuals, organisations and charities. Key partners include the National Bereavement Alliance, Cruse Bereavement Care, Marie Curie, Hospice UK, Child Bereavement UK, Sands, Wellcome Trust, Brigstow Institute, National Lottery Community Fund, and many more.
Illustrations created by Jayde Perkin for Pregnancy, Baby Loss and the Grief Journey, which was co-created by researchers, charities, parents and health professionals.
Researchers have also engaged in a variety of other collaborative and co-produced projects. A team led a project to co-create Pregnancy, Baby Loss and the Grief Journey, a free resource for parents and health professionals. Two University of Bristol Participatory Research Fund grants allowed the team to speak to a wide range of parents and healthcare professionals, collaborating with the charities Sands, Twins Trust and Antenatal Results and Choices (ARC) to ensure the resource was sensitive and inclusive.
Creative collaborations and co-production
Lesel Dawson has also led a range of other projects working with artists, including theatre-makers, visual artists, animators, and musicians. Projects include collaborating with Crowded Room on a project exploring group storytelling during bereavement, co-authoring two zines to accompany She Said Jump’s The Guy in the Luggage Rack, and investigating the effects of group singing in partnership with the Fitzhardinge Consort, St George’s Bristol and the Sing for Happiness Project. She also worked with best-selling psychotherapist Julia Samuel MBE, animator Gary Andrews and art therapist Victoria Tolchard on short films on Children, Grief and Creativity and Children, Grief and Art Therapy.
Funded by Brigstow, Jimmy Hay led the project An Empathetic Realisation of Embodied Grief in Fiction Film, co-producing the fiction film Lost Property (2021), and then producing Nothing Echoes Here (2023), and The Night a Spanish Doctor Called (2025). Carrie Etter is the author of several poetry collections that consider grief and loss, including the highly acclaimed Grief’s Alphabet(2024), a shattering elegy for her mother, and Imagined Sons (2014), which reflects on the experience of giving up a child for adoption.
Julie Cox as Clare from Lost Property, a short fiction film about grief co-produced with University of Bristol researchers. Photo credit: Clement Jochem; The cover of Grief’s Alphabet by Carrie Etter, published by Seren; Charlotte Mulliner in Nothing Echoes Here a short fiction film about grief co-produced with University of Bristol researchers.