Death Cafe profile for fandangoekid
Location: United Kingdom
About fandangoekid:
I'm Annie, a graphic artist and artist educator. I make visual narratives documenting love and loss, with a view to encouraging a more open approach to typically taboo subjects. Having experienced great bereavement, my work focuses on how we survive, the role of ritual, legacy and the various ways in which strength manifests itself. I have worked with young adults running creative workshops about these typically hard to discuss topics for over ten years, spending half the week running an art department in a Hackney school, which I set up 3 years ago, and the rest of the week working freelance. I'm attending my first Death Cafe this week.
What brings you to Death Cafe?
In 2011, I lost almost all of my family in an accident, and then, last year, my dad, after a long battle with cancer. I made a documentary about my loss, with my now business partner and my work as an artist has been focused around death and modes of handling loss, since my own family tragedy. I am interested in how death cafes work. I do a lot of work within the education system to help young people to handle complex emotions such as loss and trauma and i am keen to see how the death cafes work.
What would you like your legacy to be?
I would like my lost family, that I lost too young, to be proud of me. I would like to change the lives of young, struggling people through art and art therapy. And I would like my own children to grow up kind, independent and strong enough to show their vulnerability, in times of difficulty.
Thoughts for sharing:
I would like to say to young, vulnerable people who experience traumatic loss, that you are stronger than you think you are, that there is always someone who will help you, and that your pain can become your strength, eventually.
Contact fandangoekid
fandangoekid's posts on the Death Cafe website
Art: things i know now that i wish i'd known then
Posted by fandangoekid on Sept. 9, 2017, 9:28 a.m.
My name is Annie Nicholson and I am a graphic artist and artist educator. I work a lot around the subject of death and traumatic loss, having lost almost all of my family in an accident in 2011. I run workshops with young people suffering with PTSD and traumatic loss, and I have recently made a documentary about my family, with a view to encouraging new dialogues around the subject of death and bereavement. I'm posting a story that I pasted up on the wall in Hackney, where I live, this morning and a link to my website. I'll be coming to my first death cafe ...