The backstory

There’s a definite power in hearing the names of our loved ones once they’ve died.  

We hold two memorial services for families every year and, when we read out the names of every child who has died, it’s clear how impactful that moment is for families to hear their child’s name read aloud.  

When we were refurbishing our memorial garden in 2017, we knew that we wanted to find a unique way to honour the Tŷ Hafan children who have died, and we knew that we wanted to incorporate their names. 

Tracy Jones, our Director of Family Wellbeing and Outreach Services, was working with sound artist, Justin Wiggan, at the time. Justin specialises in creating what he calls ‘life echoes’, which are sound pieces for people reaching the end of their lives.  

At first, we thought about a sound piece that sounded like waves – because of our coastal location – but with the children’s names being whispered throughout. Justin started on that project, but it wasn’t quite working. That’s when he came up with the birdsong idea. 

Funded by a legacy gift left for Tŷ Hafan by our Founder, Suzanne Goodall, and made with the involvement of some Tŷ Hafan families, works began on the birdsong project started in 2017 and it launched just under two years later in January 2019. 

The names go all the way back to the first Tŷ Hafan child who died, but the audio begins with Suzanne Goodall’s name. We update the audio every year and now it’s over five hours long. 

And it’s not just in our memorial garden that these songs are heard. Every Tŷ Hafan family whose child dies is offered an MP3 file of their child’s name in birdsong so they can play it whenever and however they want to. We know that some families use their child’s name in birdsong as their phone alert. 

“The birdsong always stops people in their tracks because it’s so unique. That’s something that, as a team, we do really well,” says Tracy. “We’re constantly trying to be creative in the ways that we can support families to remember their children.”