Death Wings: A Virtual Open House

Discover the story and creative process behind Death Wings—and explore how creating your a set of mini-wings can bring art-making, storytelling and conversation about loss and grief into your own life and community.

Join Death Wings Project creator and playwright Bess Welden and Pre-Dead Social Club founder Laura Cleminson for a free, one-hour virtual gathering exploring the story, art and ideas behind Death Wings—and the toolkit that grew from it.

Centered around Bess's award-winning play Death Wings, the Death Wings Project uses art-making and storytelling to open conversations about death, loss, grief, connection and letting go. Through workshops and community collaborations around the country, participants have created their own sets of mini-wings using meaningful materials and the stories they carry.

During this informal Open House, Bess will share some of the backstory behind the play and Project, and Bess and Laura will talk about how their collaboration eventually led to the Death Wings Toolkit.

We'll take a closer look inside the toolkit, demonstrate the process of creating a set of mini-wings, and talk through some of the questions that come with it: What materials might you choose? What stories do they carry? Who might you invite to create alongside you? And how might the toolkit be used personally, professionally or within a community?

Already have a toolkit? Bring your questions and ideas!

Your Hosts:

Bess Welden is an award-winning playwright, performer, and theater educator based in Waterville, Maine. She spent a year as a National Arts Strategies Creative Community Fellow developing her work at the intersection of art and social change. As the founder of Death Wings Project, which offers creatively compassionate community art-making and storytelling programs about loss and grief, Bess led a team of over 20 Maine-based artists to bring performances of her play Death Wings to production in 2023. Since late 2022 she has co-facilitated over 20 wing-making workshops in Maine, New Hampshire, and California. She hopes to co-create this creative hands-on ritual for remembering and letting go with many more people through on-going workshops and the Death Wings Toolkit created in collaboration with Laura Cleminson and Pre-Dead Social Club.

Laura Cleminson is an INELDA-trained end-of-life doula, founder of the Pre-Dead Social Club, LLC, TEDx speaker, and member of the New Hampshire Health Care Decisions Coalition. Through secular, community-based programs—including monthly die-a-logues, roundtable discussions, and hands-on workshops—Laura creates opportunities for people to build confidence, clarity and language around dying, caregiving and death long before crisis hits. She describes the Pre-Dead Social Club as a “gym for death”—a place where mortals can strengthen muscles most of us were never taught to use. Laura's enthusiasm for Bess Welden's Death Wings Project—and her belief that more people should have a way to experience its creative process—eventually led to their collaboration on the Death Wings Toolkit.