This project worked with parents who had lost a twin at birth to create a short, animated film based on their experiences. Even as one baby has been lost, the survival of the co-twin means that parents navigate a particularly difficult interplay of grief and joy. Our aim was to represent a form of grief that is not widely known or understood.
Developed with artist-researcher Kate Sweeney, the project worked one to one with parents to make a series of inks from natural materials, gathered on ‘memory walks’ in places chosen by the parents. The parents used the inks in the sessions to make images, and the siblings drew with them outside the sessions to record their experiences of the walks. Kate wrote text based on our conversations with the parents about their grieving process, which was recorded in the parents’ own voices. Kate also animated the drawings and combined them with film footage of the memory places and of making the inks.
An important motivation for the parents was to create a resource for other parents who have experienced this complex form of loss.
As well as working with Kate, I also collaborated with Judith Rankin, Professor of Maternal and Child Health in the Faculty of Medicine. We worked in partnership with the neo-natal intensive care unit at the Royal Victoria Infirmary in Newcastle and the affiliated charity, Tiny Lives. The project was co-funded by the Newcastle University Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences and the Tilly Hale Fund in the Faculty of Medicine.
You can watch the film here.
You can watch a film about the project here
Blog posts about this project can be found here.