In 2024 Britten Pears Arts is exploring the theme of Compassionate Communities in relation to end of life, grief and loss across all strands of our activity. Loss touches us all at some point in our lives. Working closely with St. Elizabeth Hospice we are delivering series of activities and music programming to help build compassionate communities.

The aim of the Compassionate Communities movement is to acknowledge the major but under-recognised, the least spoken about, and the often-overlooked human experiences in all communities of serious illness, ageing, dying, caregiving and loss. We are exploring this through music programming, community work, heritage and archive, volunteering, training, environment, and visual arts. We recognise that music plays a vital role in processing grief and loss and a medium through which we can give voice to expressions of loss. Our wider activity and unique environment can also lend itself to creative and healing experiences.

We commenced our year with some workplace training delivered by St. Elizabeth Hospice for staff and volunteers for which there was significant uptake. We also hosted St. Elizabeth Hospice's public training on compassionate conversations in May this year.

In March 2024 we curated a ThinkTank on music’s role in end of life, grief and loss with contributions from palliative care consultants, music therapists, and musicians. Two of the musicians who were on residency with us in the spring came to this ThinkTank: Emily Levy and Tom Herring from Sansara.

This ThinkTank helped inspire Emily in developing her piece ‘Me Without You’ which was premiered in the Aldeburgh Festival and forged a partnership with St. Elizabeth Hospice whose voices of bereaved people were interwoven into the final piece.

Sansara choir also came on residency with us in spring following this ThinkTank. Sansara were developing work around grief they had begun during Covid. This culminated in two participatory workshops ‘Giving Voice to Grief’ delivered both at the hospice and at Snape including breathwork, soundscape and sharing to an invited audience.

International pianist George Fu also approached us about a documentary he was developing with filmmaker Matilda Hay around his experience of loss and the music of Schubert. As part of this project George is delivering a private recital for people identified by the hospice who have been bereaved, the filming of which will contribute to the documentary.

Knowing the uniqueness of our landscape, we hosted two bereavement walks from Snape delivered by volunteers from St. Elizabeth hospice with refreshments afterwards, we are planning further workshops for the autumn and going forward.

As well as the bereavement walks, we have also been running a regular Bereavement Cafe at The Red House with Britten Pears Arts volunteers who have been trained by the hospice and more recently a Bereavement Gardening Group.

We are leading on the arts strand of the hospice’s bid for Suffolk to have compassionate county status and hope this will be invigorated by a special ‘Spark’ one day event on Compassionate Communities bringing arts, health and social care together with Guy Peryer (UEA), Judi Newman (St Elizabeth Hospice), Dr Hazel Harrison; pianist George Fu and film maker Matilda Hay, composer Emily Levy and director Mella Faye, Off the Twig Theatre Company and emerging project Music To Die For which evolved from the ThinkTank earlier this year. The aim of this event is to catalyse arts organisations in the county to reflect how they might contribute to the creation of compassionate communities.