Virtual NFBPWC member Kara LC Jones calls herself a heartist and educator. She is the founder and educator of Grief and Creativity. Before that, she also co-founded KOTApress: knowing ourselves through art, journal, and outreach (which has since been archived). She is also the co-founder of The Creative Grief Studio. The goal of these two endeavors is the same: to find a more creative approach to grief support.
Kara has always been creative in her life. However, when her son died in 1999, something changed. Along with her partner Hawk, they started posting on the now defunct Yahoo Groups where they created support groups for bereaved parents. From there, they trained as support group facilitators through an international volunteer-based foundation as well as published in various publications (which can be found on Amazon).
In 2011, Kara, along with her friend Cath Duncan saw a need to deal with grief, but in a more creative way. Between the two of them, the Creative Grief Studio Certification for Practitioners was formed. From therapists to other professionals who face grief on an almost daily basis, they realized that there was a hunger for grief literacy.
In addition, Kara relates to a time when in the WWII generation as well as with her own children and grandchildren how grief literacy and grief support was not a thing but something to move on from. Thus, because of her work, Kara feels like her creative approach has helped make grief literacy a bit more understandable.
Cara says that she is always trying to figure out ways to address grief experience at all levels creatively. She looks to works like Judy Chicago’s Dinner Party https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/exhibitions/dinner_party/) (as well as her own personal writings. Over the years, she has focused on aging women artists who are dealing with disabilities while trying to keep their own art alive because she’s also been dealing that personally herself. One of her greatest resources has been found in Arts21 Disability Visibility (https://art21.org/about/accessibility-at-art21/).
When asked about her dream project Kara says that she is already at task.
She says, “I’m working with the team at The Creative Grief Studio to launch a free / pay as you can lecture series on Creative Grief Literacy open to all who might be interested. It’s a hope and vision to have people understand that creative can be so much more than fine art. To have people understand that grief is so much more than just the death of a loved one. We can experience grief at the loss of a job, divorce, environmental status, or even when we make the best choices possible for us and our families like immigration, there can be grief about the life we left behind us. The pandemic has such a high death rate and even higher disabling rate, and people are still trying to come to terms with these realities.”
To learn more about Kara, you can find her in the NFBPWC members directory (https://nfbpwc.org/Sys/PublicProfile/73786155/4325138 ), Greif and Creativity (https://griefandcreativity.com/ ), and KOTA press (https://kotapress.com/section_home/index.htm)
Kara can also be contacted personally at kara@creativeriefstudio.com.
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