LOSS IN TRANSLATION - FUNERALS AND DEATH CARE
Social Distance, Digital Congregation:
British Ritual Innovation under COVID-19
Manchester Metropolitan University April 2021
This audio documentary is a pilot of the research project Social Distance, Digital Congregation: British Ritual Innovation under COVID-19, hosted at Manchester Metropolitan University and funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.
Drawn from the research of Social Distance, Digital Congregation: British Ritual Innovation under COVID-19, Loss in Translation is a montage piece interweaving the voices of funeral and death care professionals across faiths and people who have lost loved ones during the pandemic from interviews recorded remotely during the UK’s tough winter lockdown restriction’s 2021. This is a sociological piecing reflecting on how important religious and non- religious rituals are and the potentially long-term trauma incurred when they are taken away.
We discover the initiation of a ‘standing stone’, erected as a memorial for this time when death has been so present in many people's lives.
British Ritual Innovation Under Covid-19 (BRIC-19) is a research project led by Manchester Metropolitan University in association with the University of Chester, examining how British religious communities have adapted to the COVID-19 pandemic and the restrictions it has imposed. This audio series features some of the stories and voices uncovered by this research.
Researched by Paulina Kolata and produced by Lucia Scazzocchio for Social Broadcasts and Sasha Edye-Lindner.
With Thanks to contributors: Toby Angel, Tim Ashton, Peter Gaskin, Louise Winter, Waheed Khan, Lisa Wilkinson, Rachel Meyer, Shoayb Bux, Miri Lawrence and Perry Meyer
This piece received an honourable mention in the Voice Archive category at the at the 2021 Phonurgia Nova Awards in Paris.
Audio transcript available here