This year Britten Pears Arts is exploring the theme of Compassionate Communities. The aim of the Compassionate Communities is to break the taboo about death and dying by supporting people in their local communities. We recognise the arts can play a vital role in this.

We have been creating compassionate communities through music programming, community work, heritage and archive, volunteering, training, and environment. We recognise that the arts play a vital role in processing grief and a medium through which we can give voice to expressions of loss. Our wider activity and unique environment also lends itself to creative and healing experiences.

Loss touches us all at some point in our lives. Working closely with St. Elizabeth Hospice we are delivering a series of activities and music programming to help build compassionate communities.

In this Spark! event we aim to bring together arts and cultural organisations, health, social care and voluntary organisations to explore and promote the role of the arts and culture in building compassionate communities.