Healing the Body Politic: Integrating Death Café and Expressive Arts Therapy Open Studio Processes to Create ‘Death Literate’ Civic Spaces of Support

Abstract

This community engagement project, conducted online and in-person at a local art gallery, focused on integrating Death Café and expressive arts therapy open studio processes to create more ‘death positive’ community-based spaces of support. An extensive literature review explored current research on the Death Café model and the related topics of death denial, death positivity, death education and death literacy primarily in the United States; surveyed extant international literature on the expressive arts therapy open studio model; and garnered select publications pertaining to third places and third spaces, dialogue as community empowerment, and the role of the ‘citizen therapist’. Key details gleaned from the literature review included a critique of the death denial thesis and death positivity; Death Café as a quickly growing community practice in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic; the open studio model as an inherently community-centered approach to expressive arts therapy; and dialogue as a socially connecting communicative act. One in-person and one online combined Death Café and expressive arts therapy open studio process were conducted with two different groups of self-selecting participants, ranging in age and gender but mostly alike in racial identity, language and education level. Key findings included ‘death literacy’ as a more conducive frame for community support than ‘death positivity’; the unique constraints and opportunities related to conducting this integrated process in person and online; and the potential of this work to contribute to collective, as well as individual wellbeing, as an activity taking place in civic space