Statement
Death needs to be considered a developmental stage like birth, adolescence, or midlife; these are all stages that are shared among all of humanity that need to be celebrated and need to be remembered. The project (“So The Story Grows™”) will focus on one method of facilitating this by re-inventing the traditional memorial card given out at funerals with a card set that addresses multiple omissions inherent in the current funerary agenda. Its purpose is to facilitate broad and thoughtful conversations among friends, family, and strangers at funerals and to efficiently collect and compile in some anthological form for the immediate family. It could act as an alternative to the traditional ‘one and done’ memorial card. The efficacy of the tool is based on the assumed fact that there is one degree of separation between any and all attendees at the event; that one degree is the deceased. Social media and the camera have significantly altered the art of holding a conversation, and it’s an important trait to maintain / regain, especially in intimate environments. . . such as funerals. Amidst the thousands of visual images on the smart phones of the world, how many contain meaningful audio of someone who is dearly loved, and is it ever shared?
Now imagine all of the unique stories that each person possesses. How, when, and why is it appropriate to share these stories? As an ice breaker? Anecdote? Testimonial? Memorial? How many stories go untold at funerals simply because people follow a temporally sequential protocol of “paying last respects” or feel uncomfortable initiating a conversation in front of a large group of people? “So The Story Grows™” aims to elicit these stories from funeral goers for purposes of facilitating storytelling in the form of simultaneous and lateral face-to-face conversations.
