DEATH POSITIVITY AT LAUREL HILL CEMETERY
Creating death positivity workshops and programming for middle and high school students at Laurel Hill Cemetery that highlight different aspects of death education.
Death positivity is a developing term and movement that encourages people to start open conversations about death, dying, and end of life wishes in order to decrease anxiety surrounding death. Historic Laurel Hill and West Laurel Cemeteries in Philadelphia, PA would like to become a hub of dialogue about death in the Philadelphia region. Specifically, they want to deliver programming about death positivity to middle and high school-aged students, to give children the tools to more effectively deal with death later in life.
Overview
Course: Problem Framing; Project Completed in a Team of 4
Focus: Storytelling; Research; Ideation; Prototyping; Testing
Timeline: February 2020-May 2020
Why Is Death Positivity Programming Important for Students?
Meet the imaginary Stone family. The Stone’s have 3 children: Charlotte is 17 and a junior in High School; Oliver is 14 and in 8th grade; and Heather is 11 and finishing up 5th grade. Unfortunately, their grandfather recently passed away. This is the first time that Heather has experienced death – when she saw her grandpa in the hospital, she did not understand why he was looking different. Oliver has heard about death in his science classes, but still does not know how to cope, or how to talk about the topic with his parents. Because she is the oldest, Charlotte has known their grandfather for the longest, and she is struggling to know where to turn for support grieving.
What if we can change the ending of this story by changing society’s perceptions about death? If conversations about death begin with students in middle and high school, would Heather, Oliver, and Charlotte be better prepared for situations like this?
Research
In order to understand how to create the best experience for children, and consider as many factors that influence children’s perceptions of death as possible, we interviewed people from all of these categories. We interviewed 3 death positivity experts, including Caitlin Dougherty (the woman who coined the phrase “death positivity”), a death doula, and Palliative Care Doctor. Additionally, we spoke with 9 educators, from everywhere from museums to religious institutions, and asked them about their experiences creating programming around difficult topics. 3 adults who experienced death of a close family member at a young age also gave us their perspective on the topic. Finally, we interviewed 8 students between the ages of 10 and 18, and sent a survey on the subject to their parents.
Frameworks and Insights
During our student interviews, we asked students to speak and draw about what they think death looks like. We noticed that there was a strong correlation between the student’s age and their thoughts around death. The younger students that we spoke with talked about death in physical terms, whereas the older students with greater emotional maturity focused more on emotional aspects of death.
From this, we created 3 mindsets that students generally fall into.
Our goal is to provide programming at Laurel Hill that encompasses all three aspects of death comprehension, so that all students, regardless of age, can benefit and follow a guided path that builds on their knowledge as they mature.
From our research and frameworks, we created a list of key insights. The 4 main insights that drove our ideation are:
Children understand and relate to death in 3 distinct ways that correlate highly with their age, grade, and life experience.
Treating death like birth, sex, or mental health conversations normalizes it, and these conversations can start early.
Storytelling leads to greater engagement with and empathy for the subject matter.
Death positivity is a conversation.
Ideation
Using our insights and frameworks, our team generated over 50 ideas for programming for Laurel Hill Cemetery – everything from a virtual reality cemetery tour to writing songs about death. We matched different ideas towards our different mindsets, and arrived at a 3-tiered approach to the death positivity programming for Laurel Hill.
Each tier is geared towards one of the 3 mindsets. Students begin with tier 1 in middle school, and journey through tiers 2 and 3 as they age and mature.
Testing
To begin, we reached out to teachers in the Philadelphia region to hear their initial thoughts about our programming. 16 teachers completed our survey on death positivity programming, 88% said that they thought that the programming could be incorporated into their curriculum, and 56% expressed interest in helping to develop the programming. We then ran 4 testing sessions with students, 2 to test tier 3, and then 2 to test tier 2.
Tier 3:
To test tier 3, we asked groups of students to watch a TED Talk about death positivity and death traditions in different cultures. We had them roleplay a scenario in which a close friend’s parent died of cancer, played a video about coping and grief, and ended with a discussion. We learned that even though students said that death was uncomfortable to talk about, we observed that they were very comfortable sharing personal stories with each other. The students explained that experience is the best teacher, so having death experiences helps them discuss the subject. Finally, we confirmed that being in a cemetery emphasizes the importance of death discussions.
Tier 2:
We chose the sinking of the Titanic as the historical grounding for our tier 2 testing. As in tier 3, the students watched a video about the dead bodies from the Titanic before our session. We then had students engage in a choose-your-own-adventure activity where they created stories from characters that they developed from a phone application we designed, and again finished with a discussion. We found that students really enjoyed engaging in activities, that they found historical deaths easier to discuss, that they preferred for these activities to happen in groups, and that briefing and debriefing death discussions are critical.
Solutions and Future Vision
Based on our feedback from testing, we have created outlines for tiers 3 and 2, and a plan for the continued development of tier 1.
Tier 3 (left) and Tier 2 (right):
Tier 1:
The goal of the first tier is to give the “body focused” younger students an introduction to the biology behind death. The plan is that students would begin their tier 1 programming with a cemetery tour to ease into discussions about death, and then participate in scientific hands-on activities about physical death and decomposition. We plan to connect Laurel Hill with local death positivity experts at the Mütter Museum to write this programming.
Next Steps and Future Vision:
In the short term, we hope to test workshops for students at full length at Laurel Hill, create new branding for the death positivity workshops and for Laurel Hill, and write more death positivity content for the Laurel Hill website. As more students come to Laurel Hill, it will continue to grow as a death positivity hub. In the long term, Laurel Hill can plan to invest in site specific architectural features to accommodate groups and events.
So What? The Impact of Death Positivity Programming at Laurel Hill
So, what would have happened if the Stone children had participated in Laurel Hill’s new death positivity programming?
After their grandpa dies, Charlotte, who has recently completed tier 3 programming, is able to start conversations with her younger siblings, help them grieve, and give them other resources for coping. Oliver, who has completed tiers 1 and 2, can better explain to Heather the biological changes that physically manifest themselves in their grandpa while he is at the hospital. With this knowledge, Heather is less afraid, and is actually interested in starting tier 1 programs next year. Together, Charlotte, Oliver, and Heather feel comfortable talking with their parents about the death, and discussion of their own parents’ end-of-life wishes.
Even though the death of their grandfather is still hard on all of the children, they are more prepared to handle the situation after participating in Laurel Hill’s programming.