The Grief Decks are printed!

It’s been a long, frantic, urgent process to go from the Arts Working Group on Communal Grieving back in April, to this week, but we are proud to have the Artist’s Grief Deck distribution under way.

On the same day that the first vaccines were shipping out in the US, these toolkits for supporting the grief of thousands and thousands of people were getting into the hands of our partners in the NYC Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster and the National Hospice Cooperative. There’s a lot of healing that has to happen, and this is a good example of how we believe that artists have an essential role that complements science, policy, civics, and the strengthening of our social fabric. Artists have stepped up as ‘second responders’ to address the crisis of loss we now face as a nation, at the very peak of those losses. And we have been able to do so thanks to our friends at the NYCVOAD, OHI and NHC, and the artists who pooled their expertise and experience in the Working Group, and those who reviewed submissions, who submitted hundreds of artworks and grief prompts, and guided and advised this project through this challenging year of the pandemic.

There is more to come, including a Spanish language edition and an affiliated website ready in the coming days. In the meantime, we are providing this first edition to organizations working in community support and Covid-19 response - if you work with or know of an organization that might be able to use the Grief Deck in its work, please reach out by clicking Contact above! And if you want to get a deck for yourself or a loved one, you can order a limited number of individual decks here.