Death relics and reflections : Engaging palliative staff to respond creatively to death experiences in hospice settings

We Die As We Live, is an art in health research project that positions palliative care staff, working in a myriad of capacities in hospital and hospice settings, as ‘Death Elders’ because of their expert knowledge and accumulated experience of death and dying. This paper speculates on the commemorative dimensions of death, dying and bereavement as embodied in socially-engaged artistic processes. The weekly art workshops I organised, during my yearlong artist residency at St Vincent’s Hospital, Melbourne, were designed to solicit meaningful reflection about death and its impact on the staff, using craft materials, mediums and processes that engaged the participants’ senses, and encouraged open discussion about mortality and impermanence. At the end of the residency, when these collective works on paper and ephemeral sculptures were presented in the waiting areas of St Vincent’s Hospital, they illustrated that every death is unique and every experience of death is unique, reinforced that we are all connected by this universal truth, and invited public discussion and reflection about the pervasive influence of death.