Making Space for Grief: Innovate Approaches to Knowledge Mobilization Through Art, Placemaking, and Cross-Sector Dialogue

Blogs 2 December 2024

by Jaimy Fischer

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Grief—often defined as the process of coping with loss—ebbs and flows throughout our lives. Despite its universality, this deeply human experience is often constrained by cultural taboos. In Western contexts, including Canada, cultural norms tend to discourage open expressions of grief, particularly when it occurs outside the context of death. These taboos make it harder to recognize or validate grief emerging from other lived experiences, such as major transitions, relational changes, missed or lost opportunities, and systemic and structural injustices. Beyond death, grief can stem from profound and subtle losses, such as moving away from home or community, the end of a relationship, changes at work, financial challenges, or even achieving a long-sought goal. Consider the COVID-19 pandemic: for many of us, this sudden and severe disruption to daily life was, and continues to be, a source of collective grief. These experiences stir a complex mix of emotions—sadness, anger, guilt, anxiety, helplessness—that often go unacknowledged as grief, leaving us with an incomplete understanding of its broader impacts on individuals and society.

Understanding grief is critical for navigating change, including both the disruptions we have already faced and those yet to come, such as the inevitable losses, transitions, and uncertainties tied to the climate crisis. It is also an essential ingredient for futurity and for reimagining how we organize our cities and societies. By recognizing grief as a shared experience rooted in individual and systemic losses, we can cultivate empathy as a powerful tool for bridging systemic and sectoral divides and addressing the inequities we seek to resolve.

Grief and mobility

Grief and mobility injustices are deeply connected, as immobility often disrupts the ability to connect with loved ones, engage in community, and access daily life activities. A range of intersecting factors contribute to mobility barriers and inequities, including individual circumstances like aging, disability, changes in health, as well as systemic and structural inequities like poverty, racism, and automobility. These challenges are often compounded by inequitable built environments, including inadequate transportation and housing systems, which limit opportunities for safe, reliable, and affordable movement. Mobility is more than just getting from one place to another; it is a lifeline that provides access to essential services like education, healthcare, and employment, along with opportunities for social connection, cultural participation, and community engagement. When these connections are severed, individuals and communities experience isolation, fewer opportunities, and a loss of independence.

A Collaboration Sparked by Community Engagement

Recognizing the importance of grief in understanding and catalyzing change, Mobilizing Justice (MJ) partnered with Method Collective for their third installation of Space for Grief, held from November 2-11, 2024, at Evergreen Brick Works in Toronto. Space for Grief is an immersive public art and placemaking initiative reimagining how communities understand, experience, and engage with grief. The project, born from the work and insights of Method Collective founders Fran Quintero Rawlings, Ziyan Hossain, and Calla Lee, uses innovative ways to explore grief as a critical public health issue, offering a sanctuary for healing, reflection, and connection.

This collaboration grew from MJ’s community connections and engagement through its Community and Equity Advisory Table (CEAT), where member Fran Quintero Rawlings offered a unique opportunity to explore the intersection of grief and mobility. Through this initiative, MJ was able to engage in innovative knowledge mobilization and cross-sector discussions on mobility justice, grief, and equity.

Space for Grief invited visitors to explore thought-provoking prompts set among remnants of industrial machinery and organic plant materials. The indoor and outdoor elements wove together a space for individual and collective reflection. As part of the interactive experience, visitors wrote personal messages on paper birds and hung them, sharing their stories and memories of grief. These messages formed a collective display that grew and evolved as more contributions were added.

Image description: A narrow hallway with exposed brick walls covered in graffiti features hundreds of suspended white paper birds, illuminated by soft purple and blue lighting, creating a dreamy, reflective atmosphere.