In 2024, Britten Pears Arts explored the theme of Compassionate Communities across all strands of its activity, focusing on experiences of end of life, grief, and loss. Working in close partnership with St. Elizabeth Hospice, we developed a wide-ranging programme designed to help build compassionate communities and to recognise the major – yet often under‑acknowledged –experiences that shape every community: serious illness, ageing, dying, caregiving, and bereavement.
Throughout the year, this theme informed our music programming, community engagement, heritage and archive work, volunteering initiatives, professional development, environmental projects, and visual arts activity. We sought to create spaces where people could reflect on and share experiences that are frequently the least spoken about, despite being universal.
Central to this exploration was the understanding that music plays an essential role in processing grief, offering forms of expression and connection that extend beyond words. Music has long been a means through which individuals and communities make sense of loss, remember those who have died, and find comfort, solidarity, and hope.
As part of this programme, we convened a Think Tank that brought together leading artists, practitioners, researchers, and thinkers whose work intersects with themes of grief, care, and the arts. This gathering provided an opportunity for participants to reflect collectively on the role that music and the broader arts ecosystem can play in supporting people through experiences of bereavement and end of life. The discussion drew on a wide range of artistic practices, cultural perspectives, and professional experiences, encouraging participants to share both challenges and possibilities.
The Think Tank generated new insights, fresh conversations, and a set of emerging ideas that will shape future work. Participants highlighted the importance of sustained collaboration between arts organisations, health partners, and communities; the need for sensitive and inclusive approaches when working with people facing loss; and the potential for creative practice to support both individual wellbeing and collective resilience. The session also surfaced questions around legacy, memory, ritual, and the role of artistic leadership in creating conditions for compassionate action.
Music does not conform to the scientific language of outcomes and risk, it is a template for offering connection, interaction, possibility – it is a gestural language. Music is a gesture of reaching out.
Several artistic projects emerged directly from this thematic exploration. Music to Die For – a project that highlights the profound connections between music, memory and the experience of grief, inviting people to share their stories and the songs that that resonate with their experience of loss – emerged out of our conversations about how music can accompany people at the end of life, offering comfort, presence, and dignity. The Think Tank provided inspiration for the sensitive and deeply personal work of composer Emily Levy, whose piece Me Without You reflected on grief, memory, and the shifting contours of identity after loss premiered in 2024’s Aldeburgh Festival. Similarly, the vocal ensemble Sansara developed a powerful collaboration with St. Elizabeth Hospice, creating work that honoured the stories of patients, families, and staff, and demonstrating how choral music can cultivate connection and compassion within hospice settings. Together, these projects embodied the themes at the heart of our 2024 programme, translating reflection into artistic practice and community impact.
Overall, the Think Tank contributed significantly to our ongoing inquiry into how Britten Pears Arts can continue to support compassionate communities – honouring lived experience, amplifying unheard stories, and enabling the arts to play a meaningful role in the landscapes of care, loss, and human connection.
In attendance:
- Facilitator Katherine Zeserson
- Emily Levy (Composer/musician, part of Me Without You)
- Dr Guy Peryer (Senior research fellow, NIHR Applied Research Collaboration – East of England)
- Joe Sawyer (Consultant in Palliative Care, St Elizabeth Hospice)
- Gary Ansdell (Music therapist/researcher, Exeter University)
- Phillipa Anders (Coach, advisor, volunteer, writer)
- Dr Hazel Harrison (clinical psychologist)
- Tom Herring (Artistic director, Sansara)
- Alistair Comery (PhD student, graduate research assistant – University of Bath)
- Dr Helen Loth ( Music Therapist, Cambridge Institute for Music Therapy Research & Arthur Rank Hospice, Cambridge)
- Angie Lee-Foster (Producer for Creative Health, Britten Pears Arts)
Click on a profile below to watch a video with the participant.
