An Insight on “Pop-Up” Urban Memorials

Jane Hutcheon

This video is an excellent insight into funerary practices, specifically memorials. "Those roadside memorials that send shivers down your spine energized a video discussion as Jane Hutcheon opened a dialog with Professor Gordon Coonfield of Villanova University in Philadelphia, PA. The talk centered on how these memorials capture and communicate feelings in deeply personal and very public ways. The video captures the photographs he shared, many from the Kensington Remembers Gallery site."

The video is about an hour long, but it's fascinating if you want to learn more about graphic street memorials, especially concerning violent or tragic deaths (white ghost bicycles, for instance, for individuals who were killed by automobiles while riding bikes).

• You can find Jane Hutcheon at her Substack account, The Juvenile Geriatric.
• Barbara Tien can be found at her Substack, ProjectKin.
• Gordon Coonfield, PhD, can be found at his Villanova University page, where he is an Associate Professor of Communication.

"Forget-Me-Not: How We Memorialise is a six-part series for storytellers and family historians that explores how we memorialize and preserve the stories of people who have died. The series is a collaboration between Jane Hutcheon of The Juvenile Geriatric Newsletter and Projectkin.org, a community of family historians hooked on stories.

"Jane Hutcheon is a Sydney-based journalist and the creator and former host of the ABCTV interview show One Plus One from 2010 until 2019. She is also a writer and performer in theater productions. In 2022 she wrote a show about my mother’s upbringing called Lost in Shanghai, and her latest show is Difficult Conversations with Jane Hutcheon. We’re thrilled to have this Forget-Me-Not series as part of Projectkin."