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Loss in Translation
Client: Apart of Me
Role: Co-creation lead
2021-2022
“I feared emotions. I bottled up a lot. I was scared to add my sadness to the bigger sadness of my family. I didn’t want to trigger my dad.”
How can we empower young people to support each other in transforming their grief into compassion?
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Loss in Translation is a culturally competent toolkit co-created for and by bereaved young Londoners aged 16 - 25 from minority ethnic backgrounds. This toolkit helps young people to get a better understanding of their grief, build habits of self compassion and transform their grief into compassion for others through compassionate action. ​
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Apart of Me were the winners of the Mayor of London bereavement challenge with the Loss in Translation toolkit.
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The challenge
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Over 4 million children and young people bereaved by Covid 19. Those from ethnic minority communities are being hit the hardest: they are more likely to lose a loved one to Covid-19, less likely to access support, and at greater risk of social isolation. This called us into action to make sure Apart of Me is accessible and impactful for the most vulnerable out there.
The journey
Over a period of 6 months we did desk research to explore the themes of cultural competency and intersectionality.
We did user research with organisations either focussed on young people from ethnic minority background or bereavement, to understand what they think is needed to better support their users. We also had in depth conversations with young people from ethnic minority background to explore their experience of bereavement and support, and the changes they would like to see.
Together with our youth psychologists and grief experts we developed a clinical framework to shape what is needed to move from grief to compassion. This framework formed the base for our co-creation workshops.
We recruited 9 bereaved young people to take part in 6 online co-creation workshops. Over 6 weeks we took them through a journey to understand their grief better, develop habits of self compassion, and help them imagine how they would want to spread compassion in their own environments. Alongside this we developed and reviewed the toolkit together.
We created a prototype for the toolkit which was further developed and tested with a group of young people. One of the young people joined our core team as a service designer to take the design of the toolkit further.
The impact
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