good life, good death, good grief

Truacanta

The Truacanta Project: how we've coddiwompled our way through a pandemic

In March 2020, our five Truacanta groups had been selected and we were all looking forward to working together over the following two years on laying the foundations for compassionate communities in Scotland. The local projects were due to launch in April 2020. By mid-March, the project was on hold as we wrapped our heads around the emerging situation which, as we all know now, was going to last a lot longer than the initial three months we suggested.

As time ticked on and the reality became…well, real, we realised that the Truacanta Project was not going to happen, at least not the way we’d all envisaged it over the previous few months. The visions for change that each group had worked on had been based on face to face contact, the ability to go out and meet people, get to know and work with local communities and – importantly – on the group having capacity to do these things. All of this had changed, almost overnight.

We know that compassionate community activity can make a real difference to people facing difficult times around death, dying, loss and care. And we knew that from March 2020, difficult times were all around and ahead for communities and individuals. So what could we do? How could we continue with a project that we were no longer able to take forward as planned? How do you do a thing when you can’t do the thing?

Well, in true community development tradition, we coddiwompled. And that looked a bit like this.

What the local groups have been doing:

Truacanta Perthshire

In Perth they grew some Selfie Wings, giving local people a place and space to reflect and share their experiences, and to mark To Absent Friendsv week they created a remembrance trail using QR codes.

North Berwick Compassionate Community

North Berwick invited local people to a series of Online Armchair Chats, with speakers, music and poetry. They also organised in-person events at their local Fringe by the Sea.

Two of the North Berwick volunteers have trained as EASE Online Facilitators and have since delivered two courses locally with another coming up. They are working with St Columba’s Hospice to build a local pool of Compassionate Neighbours, and now have a paid member of staff to take this forward.

Say Something Dundee

Dundee have organised several online Conversation Cafes, as well as Information Sessions in partnership with a local solicitor. They have an active Facebook page, and have hosted Facebook Live events. They are looking at the possibility of funding a development post.

Highland Truacanta

In Highland they have held lots of online events for local people, including regular Virtual Tea Breaks and Creative Conversations where they’ve looked at ways of celebrating and remembering people who have died, including using poetry and arts and crafts activities. They were recently able to continue with these conversations in person as face to face events started back up.

One of the group has also trained as an EASE Online volunteer facilitator and is aiming to deliver a course to local people.

Ayrshire

In Ayrshire, they have only recently been able to regroup and have opened up the steering group back up to include people from the third sector and the local hospice. They have started mapping activity to identify gaps and recently held a face to face engagement event, to get input from the local community.

What else the project has been doing:

Toward the end of 2021, we held events for the Truacanta and wider GLGDGG community.

We organised online Truacanta Death Clubs.

We have held three Truacanta networking events, giving our groups the chance to gather together and share experiences, successes and challenges and to inspire each other going forward.

We will be offering regular EASE Online courses as well as EASE Online Facilitator training; and offer priority places to Truacanta groups looking to participate in the course and go on to train as facilitators.

Meanwhile, our Evaluation Coordinators have been working with the local groups and evaluating local and national activity.

So, we have been focusing on small steps and embracing change. At one of our networking events, our guest speaker Anne Connor from Outside the Box offered this quote which felt very apt:

“All great innovations feel like a mess in the middle.” Rosabeth Moss Kanter

We are very fortunate that Macmillan have extended our funding for another year, to allow us to support the Truacanta groups for a bit longer as they start to build their local activity.

At our last networking event, our guest speaker Emer O’Leary invited us to create new visions for the next and final year. There was a real sense of pride from the groups at what they have achieved in the last two years, under very difficult circumstances. And, despite all the setbacks and challenges, there was still enthusiasm, passion and drive to push forward in this final year and to really set solid foundations in improving local experiences of death, dying, loss and care. We may not know exactly where our destination is, and the path there may keep changing direction, but we’ll keep coddiwompling along knowing that it is worth it.

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