These names will be forever in our skies

The Birdsong Project is an innovative, powerful way to remember the Tŷ Hafan children who have died.

The Birdsong Project

Finding ways to remember a child who has died is such an important source of comfort for many bereaved families, but there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to memory making.

Just one of the ways we remember the Tŷ Hafan children who have died is through the These Names Will be Forever in Our Skies project (aka the Birdsong Project).

The project

When a Tŷ Hafan child dies, their name is translated into morse code and then translated into birdsong. We play that bird song in our memorial garden, in a peaceful setting right on the edge of the water. Families can sit on benches in our gazebo and listen to the birdsong representing their children’s names.

Birds learn their songs through imitation, so the idea is that birds will hear the names of the children and repeat their names in birdsong, so that these names will be forever in our skies.

Of course, there are lots of different bird songs to choose from, so the children’s names are translated into the songs of the birds which sing the loudest during their birth month.

The gaps between the children’s names in the sound piece represent how old the child was when they died. So, if a child died at the age of seven, there’s a seven second gap between that child’s birdsong and the next child’s birdsong.

The making of the Birdsong Project

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.”

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