Giving voice to those bereaved by suicide: The ‘nothing prepared me for this’ project

Abstract‘Nothing prepared me for this’ was a project of Support After Suicide which is a suicide bereavement counselling service in Victoria. It aimed to provide people bereaved by suicide the space to fi nd words and give voice to this often silent experience. It consisted of writing, publication and performance components and was funded by an Arts Victoria grant. This grant enabled the second author to conduct weekly writing workshops which ran for 5 months in 2011, with 15 participants completing this process. The writing workshops culminated in a book published in 2012 with work contributed by all the participants. Participants then attended further weekly workshops in 2012 to prepare for performance of their work in May 2012. This paper will present the story of this project, its conceptualisation, implementation and outcomes. A mixed method evaluation was carried out at three points: pre-workshops; at the conclusion of the writing workshops; and at the conclusion of the performances. Both quantitati...