This Grief Thing isn’t a shop. Not really. It’s a space to really sit with our grief.
Stepping into This Grief Thing, you might feel unsure about what you are walking into. A shop, about grief? The initial reaction could be to feel trepidation – pairing the complex, world-ending experience that is grief with selling you things could feel inappropriate. In the wrong hands, this is a concept that could have woefully missed the mark. But with Fevered Sleep’s caring, astutely intelligent touch, the concept becomes an experience we should all rush to take part in.
This Grief Thing isn’t a shop. Not really. It’s a space to really sit with our grief. To turn grief from an isolating, lonely feeling we all have to suffer through, into a community space where we are allowed to feel our deepest, most difficult emotions.
Grief is something we will all undergo in our lives. To be human, is to grieve. And yet, we are so bad at talking about it. We lack the words. Fevered Sleep gives them to you. Fevered Sleep gives you permission to not have the words, but to show up anyway. It provides something so important, that is lacking from society. Space to grieve.
In the shop, you can find a take on Victorian mourning broaches, which makes you consider the different ways humans have grieved across time. Grief postcards which give you words when you have none. T-shirts and other apparel with the words too. It is a pay what you want system – there’s no obligation to buy anything, or to pay the price listed. And not everything is for sale. Towards the back of the ‘shop’ you’ll find sofas, a stack of grief literature, a box of tissues. You can just sit. Sit and feel what you need to.
The sofas face on to a white wall filled with postcards, where other visitors to the shop who have shared their stories, with such candour and honesty. You’ll find it nigh on impossible to keep the tears at bay spending time here, and it will feel so cathartic to cry openly – for your own pain, and everyone else’s. We’re all grieving, aren’t we?
As part of my trip to the shop, I was lucky enough to hear from Fevered Sleep’s creative directors, Sam Butler and David Harradine, who shared how they came to put the shop together. The talked through the research they had conducted to create the space, and their own experiences, and what the shop has taught them. As they rightfully said, grief is so often silenced, hidden and ignored. In these four walls, it isn’t. What a magical thing.
This Grief Thing runs until Sunday 22nd February at the Barbican’s Level G Studio as part of Scene Change, the Centre’s season of transformative events in unexpected places.