Jo Ritchie and Laura McDonagh discuss the ‘Projecting Grief’ exhibition in Victoria Gate which explores the relationship between loss, creativity and healing, ahead of the Leeds International Festival of Ideas.
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00:00 My name is Jo Ritchie and I'm the photographer behind Projecting Grief.
00:04 And my name is Laura McDonagh and I am the interviewer and the writer for Projecting Grief.
00:09 Projecting Grief is a project exploring the links between grief and creativity.
00:16 So we speak to people and I photograph people who are doing something creative with their grief,
00:23 who have been bereaved and who are either creating something specifically out of their grief
00:29 or are using creativity or some sort of creative practice or art form as a distraction or just as a comfort.
00:37 The project started when I lost my brother in 2017.
00:41 I, being a photographer, I couldn't see myself getting back to a creative headspace,
00:46 couldn't see going back into work and doing the job I'd done before.
00:50 And I spoke to a lot of different people who were doing something creative with their grief
00:56 and I just found it so inspiring and a really interesting topic basically.
01:01 So I started taking pictures, started taking their portraits.
01:05 I heard about the project back in 2020 and I'd recently lost my mum quite suddenly.
01:10 I think previously I'd been a bit of a frustrated creative, not a natural creative,
01:14 and I'd really got into writing as a way of kind of dealing with what I was going through at that time.
01:20 So I was featured on the project back in 2021 and then a year later Joe got in touch
01:26 and asked if I would help out with some of the interviewing and the writing
01:30 and felt it's such an impactful project and so important I was really happy to get involved.
01:35 We heard a while ago that Liffey were planning as part of their festival to run a panel event
01:41 saying how do we talk about grief, they like to kind of kickstart these big conversations
01:47 and obviously that fed really well into what we were doing.
01:50 So there's some really big names on that panel event and as some build up to that, to start that conversation
01:56 they asked us if we would like to be involved and bring this exhibition from its kind of online home
02:03 into the centre of Leeds to really encourage people to start having a conversation
02:09 about loss and about bereavement and about ways of coping with that.
02:13 We get a lot of messages saying how helpful they found the community,
02:18 how helpful they found reading other people's stories, how interesting it is to look at other people's creative work.
02:23 So to bring it into the real world as it were, offline, hopefully we'll just be reaching even more people
02:32 who will be able to experience it and take similar hope and inspiration from it.
02:37 I think it would be easy to assume that an exhibition or a project that centres on grief could be quite depressing
02:44 and I hope that when people come in and experience it first hand that they have the opposite experience.
02:49 That's certainly been my experience being involved with the project.
02:53 It's actually really uplifting, it's really inspiring to see these people doing what they're doing creatively
03:00 and what they're doing to get themselves through a tough time.