‘Stones, the sea, grief and collective healing in arts practice’ by Roua Horanieh

Stones, the sea, grief and collective healing in arts practice: Reflections on Touchstone, a collective creative project in East Anglia by artist Gillian Allard

Written by Roua Horanieh

This is the first article in a new series of commissioned blogs by Counterpoints Arts, Notes on Courage and Socially Engaged Art Practice, seeking to document learnings from socially engaged projects and share them as a resource for artists, organisations and communities. 

Roua Horanieh, a Syrian British writer and architect, tells us about Touchstone, a project by artist Gillian Allard that Roua also worked on as part of Platforma Festival 2025, produced by Counterpoints Arts. 

Touchstone is a creative activity underpinned by care and support that works across grief, migration and place. It brings together an artist, a writer, a hospice, and a community of participants through a structured and gentle creative process. The project reflects an approach to socially engaged practice that centres care, consent and time. 

Counterpoints commissioned Touchstone as part of its ongoing work supporting socially engaged practice, particularly projects that respond to migration, displacement and lived experience. Alongside supporting the delivery of the project, Counterpoints is interested in how learning from such work can be articulated, shared and carried forward.

Gillian Allard:

I think a lot of people have this experience. When somebody passes, you don’t necessarily get to say goodbye in the way you want to.

I created a project called Touchstone, which is about releasing feelings of loss and grief. I’ve been putting photographs onto different surfaces for over twenty years. And lately I learned how to do it using digital photographs. It happened to coincide with my father dying. During lockdown, I started putting them onto pebbles and then I came to the beach. I’d made one of my father and I released it. It helped me. That’s the hope with the project really, that that same feeling passes on to other people. 

We came here for a release. And what that actually means is, in workshops, we make precious stones from beach pebbles, and what I do is I bond a photograph that somebody has sent me of somebody that’s passed, somebody very close to them, somebody special to them. In the workshop we reveal the stone, and then we bring it to the sea. And in between that time, people have written some words, and they take the stone to the sea and they release it on its new journey, and hopefully release some of their anguish as well. 

Sometimes people just fall through the cracks, their passing isn’t noticed or goes unsung. Or people don’t feel they have the opportunity to grieve and the project hopes to reach out to relatives of those people so that they can release something of their pain. But also allow the people to liberate the people they are releasing.

How we carry grief, together

Gillian Allard’s project Touchstone brought together a community of thirty people who had lost someone they loved. Some of them had experienced their loss weeks before they took part, others had lost their loved one years before. 

Some of the losses were due to natural causes, whilst others were complex and traumatic, involving unnatural deaths, young people and children. 

Some participants had lived in East Anglia since birth, some had moved there from somewhere else in the country, and some had recently arrived as migrants, refugees and asylum seekers. 

Regardless of where they came from or had spent their lives, regardless of who they were or what they did, loss was something they all related to and understood in each other.

The project took place in Ipswich, Gainsborough and Woodbridge for its Reveal workshops, and in Felixstowe and Dunwich Minsmere for its Release sessions. The Reveal workshops took place in libraries. The Release sessions took place on the beach and in the sea. And when all thirty participants had been through all the stages of the project, they came together at the Old Custom House in Ipswich for an exhibition that showed their journey and the work Gillian had done for the project. 

Gillian Allard is an artist photographer who lives in Ipswich. She has developed a technique of transferring images onto hard surfaces such as wood, concrete and stone. These images then become embedded in the body of the elements she chooses and they withstand the passing of time. She calls the transfer of the image a bonding. One remarkable image she has worked on is ‘A Lowestoft Man’  – a portrait photograph bonded to an existing concrete exterior surface, in Ness Point, the most easterly point in the UK. It is facing the sea and heavy weather and hasn’t changed since it was applied. 

For Touchstone, Gillian reached out to St Elizabeth’s Hospice which is based in Ipswich and through them, she sent out a letter inviting people who had lost someone dear to them to join her project. She explained that she would be asking them to send her a picture of their loved one so she could bond it to three stones she had previously collected for each participant from the local beaches. 

A large stone, roughly the size of a palm, on the back of which they would be invited to write their tribute to the person they are grieving, was to be exhibited at the Old Custom House and then returned to them to keep. The smaller stone was to be released in the sea and a third little stone was for them to keep in their pockets so they could take it wherever they went. 

Gillian made numerous little and careful decisions as she developed her project that made it an experience of creativity, care and tenderness. She spent a lot of time with the pictures she received and then bonded to the stones, developing a relationship with each person who had passed, and attending to them with care and presence. 

Thirty people chose to take part in Touchstone. They met in groups of four or five. They arrived at one of the libraries where the workshops were being held. They were offered tea and coffee and sat around in a circle with either Chris or Emma from St Elizabeth’s Hospice. The project was explained and they were each handed a box that had their name on it. In the box was the big stone, covered in green soft felt, almost like a blanket for someone at rest. The participants opened the box, removed the green felt and saw their loved one. They picked up the stone and held it in their palm, in a gesture that looked like holding someone’s heart. 

This was the most difficult moment of the workshop. Sometimes the participants spoke of their loss, how it happened, how they felt, what their person was like, and sometimes they didn’t, because it was too much, and that was OK. Chris, Emma and Gillian reminded everyone to take their time, to feel free to take a moment when they needed to step out. Participation was entirely voluntary and no one had to do anything if they didn’t want to. 

Chris said that grief is unique to each person, like a fingerprint. 

Emma said grief comes in waves and follows no rules. 

Gillian invited the participants to join the workshop so they could reveal the images that were bonded to the smaller stone. She handed them each their stone, which was covered with a layer of paper concealing the image. They wet the paper using a small pipette, filled from individual dropper bottles of water Gillian had prepared. They rubbed the stone gently with their thumbs, until the paper slowly disintegrated and the image of their loved one appeared. The magic happened slowly and gradually until the image was complete and clear. 

On the back of the stone they wrote “Please return me to the sea so I can travel far and free.”

I collaborated with Gillian on Touchstone, to help the participants write their tributes to their loved ones. Gillian had given each one of them a notebook and a pen. After the Reveal and a little break, participants were encouraged to write freely in their notebooks. This was to remain private. It didn’t need to be polished or comprehensive, it didn’t need to make sense. It was just a space for them to write down the words that were in their thoughts, and let them rest somewhere safe outside of them. We talked about how it could be helpful to do that. To put our thoughts down outside of ourselves, somewhere safe, but outside of us. We also talked about how our thoughts and feelings can be contradictory, confused, overwhelming and that it was all OK to put this in the notebook. 

We then thought about what they wanted to write on the back of their big stones. These were to be exhibited at the Old Custom House in Ipswich before going home with them. We talked about how they would want to feel when they picked up the stone in the future. We talked about thinking of important or even joyful memories they had with their loved ones. 

The workshops ended soon after the writing, with everyone sharing how they felt if they wanted to. Gillian briefed everyone on the Release sessions that were to happen the following week. They would meet by the sea, have a cup of tea and then, when they were ready, they would walk down to the water, and release their small stone in the sea.

I went to one of the Release sessions in Felixstowe. The day had started grey and heavy, but when we gathered at the hut Gillian had arranged for us, the sun came out and the wind settled. We had some tea and we spoke. We sat and waited. The participants then went down to the sea one by one. Some chose to gently lay their stone where the waves met the shore, some threw it in, as far as they could. Some went in the water a few steps in. The sun was on them and the water took what it was being gifted. To me, it felt as if the sea promised to keep the stones safe, to hold them and bring them back with every wave. Releasing the stone into it was like an exhale, a breath of pain let out to air and kept safe within the sea’s depth. 

The energy in the group changed after the Release. It was lighter. People felt noticeably better. Gillian invited everyone for some chips and we parted, holding the days’ energy, tenderness and light within us. 

The last stage of the project was an exhibition at the Old Custom House where all the stones and participants came together. Gillian had laid the stones on little colourful cushions. Visitors were invited to pick up the stones and read the tributes. Counterpoints’ Hossam Fazulla had made a film from the workshops and sessions and it was projected on a screen for all to see. There was a big table of food for everyone to sit down, have a cup of tea and a bite to eat and talk about their experience in the project. 

The participants described the experience as meaningful, helpful and healing. They were all happy to have taken part and were grateful to Gillian for the project. They encouraged her to run it again and again as it resonated with them deeply and felt important and good. 

Learning in hindsight

As the project came to an end, Gillian reflected on what Touchstone had made visible in hindsight:

One important learning was the need for more on-the-ground mental health support. While the project was carefully structured and held, it would have been valuable to have active professional mental health support present, both during the workshops and as part of the project’s documentation and reflection.

The exhibition also revealed new possibilities. It could have been treated more deliberately as an outreach moment for the wider public. Some visitors found the work deeply emotive and moving, and may have benefited from the presence of a professional mental health practitioner, rather than relying on the artist to hold those responses.

One very positive learning was the importance of working with skilled bilingual interpreters. For participants who were migrants and refugees, this support helped them feel included, listened to and understood. By the time of the exhibition, several spoke about feeling part of the local community in a new way.

The project also reinforced the value of collective support. While one-to-one counselling is important, Touchstone showed how much support can come from being in a group, sharing stories and listening to others. These shared experiences created bonds that, in some cases, may continue beyond the project.

Sharing food, particularly cake, played a role in creating warmth and ease. The group gatherings at the end of each beach session were especially important. They helped participants transition back into everyday life, so no one left carrying the experience alone. Leaving together, after eating and talking, made the release feel shared rather than solitary.

Many participants said they had benefited deeply from taking part and felt the project should continue. This was expressed particularly strongly by some of the Afghan women, who spoke about cultural expectations to carry grief privately, and about how many others in their communities could benefit from a project like this.

A community had come together despite the different backgrounds and life experiences they each had had. In the room, it didn’t matter what mother tongue one spoke, what place of birth they had, or where they had lived their lives. It didn’t matter what they did for a living or how they spent their time. What mattered was their loss, how they were learning to live with it and how they had come together to engage with it. 

Loss is a universal experience. Grief is painful. 

Nobel Prize laureate Svetlana Alexievich writes in her book Second Hand Time: 

“I pace and pace the circles of pain. I can’t seem to snap out of them. In pain there is everything: suffering, triumph. Sometimes I feel that pain is like a secret connection between people, a bridge, sometimes I think it is an abyss.” 

Touchstone offers several important learnings for socially engaged practice. It shows how clear structure can support participants and artists in emotionally intense work. It demonstrates the importance of choice, consent and the option to step back at every stage. It highlights the value of working in partnership with care organisations who bring expertise, trust and continuity. It also shows how time, preparation and attention to detail shape experiences of dignity and safety in participatory settings.

Interview with Gillian after the exhibition closed

What would you like the blog to say?

The idea of the project itself is quite simple but often some of the simplest ideas can resonate with people particularly when grief stricken; you need a way in, a creative path people can follow without feeling intimidated and maybe even a little exciting by inviting them to do something unusual that is set in nature. When you confront people with these challenges, that helps them open up. Challenging gently, putting water drops and seeing a face come through, it worked and the writing, some people felt they could not and then they filled their notebook.

It is how it is introduced, it was done so that there was a careful, sensitive and clear clear pathway; they were held, guided and not forced. People who didn’t want to release their stones didn’t have to. This was made clear. It was not compulsory.

How was your experience of running this project?

Part of the reason I made it step by step was also for me so I can keep emotionally focused. Not a free for all where we just sit and talk about how we feel. There were tasks to be completed. Formulated. It helped me keep focused. Because with the people crying and the stories being told, if there wasn’t a framework, I wouldn’t have been able to cope. The formulaic set up was as much to keep me safe and focused as for them. 

At times I found it very trying, I would go home and feel how blown away I was. It was so much information. Halfway through the project I felt worried and drained. It was almost like living grief. Some of the symptoms of being grief stricken were projected. 

What have you realised in hindsight now that the project is over?

For some members of the group who were newly settled in Ipswich, it was an opportunity to connect with a community and feel grounded in it. By the end of the project, the participants had become their own little community. 

What will you take with you from it, what have you learned?

This project was a pilot. I made many tweaks as the project developed.

More logistical support in the future would be helpful. 

We’ve learned so much and it’s about acting on that next time around. 

What do you think has been the effect of the project on the participants?

If grief is a bridge we have helped them navigate that very difficult journey and get them somewhere; I’m not saying over it, but the project helped them take one or ten or however many steps forward. 

We had lovely feedback. One of the participants said the project made a difference to her and to her family. People really appreciate that people they love have been acknowledged in a respectful and public way. We haven’t shied away, their faces are on stones in an exhibition and they are proud of that. The project has attached a good memory to a bad memory. 

One of the participants said she now feels she can grieve for her lost one in a way that’s not just looking into the abyss of grief. Something beautiful has helped her open up to it. She feels like people are holding her hand and she is not just left to get on with it. 

Knowing that people out there have had that same experience even if they don’t see each other again, they have come together and the memory of having been supported is important and intrinsic to their recovery. 

What feedback has stayed with you?

They have all touched me in different ways. One group who did the Release session had not done the Reveal workshop. It was too much for them.

They met in a carpark by the beach to go and release their stones. It was awkward. Blankets and chairs and people who didn’t know each other. The emotion was so intense. Everybody cried and they started talking and it all came out; what had happened to their loved one, how it had been tragic. I was shocked by how quickly you felt this intense bonding between them. From people standing as far apart as they possibly could to threads of conversation criss-crossing and at the end they were all hugging and comforting each other. They will probably never see each other again and the connection is really profound. They were blown away. What happened? It was crazy. 

It was the ‘confession with strangers’ effect. They were allowed to just blurt out this stuff, this experience and people listened to them and understood.  

We also had lots of feedback and comments in the comments book at the Custom House. 

I sent the participants questions on what had worked and what their experience had been and you get a general feel of how everyone felt which is really positive. 

What was surprising is the number of people who were recently bereaved and who chose to join?

How everyone supported each other was beautiful. 

And the project had an impact on everyone, even those organising it.  

We all worked together. 

They are special and their experience is important to us and we want to make it as respectful and beautiful as we can and give them those little moments of awe when they removed the felt and first saw the stone for example; that set  the tone for the workshop. 

We’re looking for new funding so we can work for a longer period with a bigger group, maybe 100 people. 

Counterpoints are really good at involving themselves in cross community projects and that’s what’s been special to me and why I would want to do it again with their support. They have so much experience with people, they are great at steering and framing things, which can be complex, a little like a river flowing in the sun and underneath it, there is so much going on. 

Integrating and involving our communities through such sensitive projects can only lead to more positive connections.

About Roua Horanieh

Roua is a Syrian British writer and overseas-qualified architect.

Roua’s plays, essays, stories and art installations sit at the intersection of architecture and storytelling. Her work often focuses on displacement with a participatory approach through collective creative practice.

This first blog sets the tone for a series of commissioned reflections on socially engaged practice supported by Counterpoints. Each blog will focus on a different project or artist’s practice, context and set of questions, offering insight into how artists and communities work together. Touchstone offers a starting point for thinking about how socially engaged work can be held, shaped and shared ethically. We hope you enjoy reading it, and that you continue to follow Gillian and Roua’s practices.