Before-I-Die Campaign

WRITE ABOUT IT, TALK ABOUT IT: STUDENTS BRING “BEFORE-I-DIE” PROJECT TO SINGAPORE

Death is a taboo topic in Singapore. Changing the way our society views death and dying will play a part in advancing understanding and acceptance of palliative care as a way to “add life to days, whether or not days can be added to life”. But if we do not even talk about death, how can we understand the wishes of our loved ones as they approach the end of life? A group of medical students decided that getting people to doodle on chalk boards was a way to start the conversation, and BID@Sg was born.

In partnership with the Singapore Hospice Council, medical students from NUS brought the ‘Before-I-Die’ (BID) Project to Singapore, a global art initiative aimed at engaging members of the community to share their dreams and aspirations on walls or boards in public spaces. The team hopes to inspire Singaporeans to reflect on what’s most important to them in their lives, and to live a meaningful life by placing it in perspective of death. In addition, the team went a step further to capture the voices and wishes of people through short interviews, creating a film in partnership with students from Ngee Ann Polytechnic’s School of Film, Sound and Video. The video also encapsulates pearls of wisdom of several palliative care patients who wanted to share their thoughts on life before death and what living a fulfilled life looks like.

Many months of hard work bore fruit, with the boards being placed in various spaces within Singapore, such as shopping malls (Star Vista, White Sands, Bugis+) and tertiary universities. This culminated in a final exhibition in October as part of the Best-of-You Exhibition in Marina Square and the Voices for Hospices Concert, in celebration of World Hospice and Palliative Care Day. Members of the public were invited to share their thoughts and photos of the boards during the concert. ‘To travel the world’, ‘to be able to help people’, ‘to spend time with loved ones’, and ‘be happy’ were some of the recurring themes. Following the screening of the film created by the project, the project directors, Shawn and Mervyn, were invited on stage to share their motivations for starting the project.

The project has been handed over to the next generation of NUS Medicine students who will run with the cause, to raise awareness of palliative care and the importance of having the necessary “caring conversations” that help people live meaningfully to the end. As the project continues to mature, the endeavour remains: to help foster conversations about end-of-life care between loved ones by sharing the stories and the words of wisdom that palliative care patients have to tell the world.