Moved by a desire to help people deal with grief and angst caused by COVID-19, Brexit, and the climate crisis, artist Annie Nicholson wanted to create a space where the public can shake out grief and unravel their climate angst.

Nicholson is collaborating with The Loss Project, K67 Berlin, and Street Soundsystem to realize this ambitious public art project.

The kiosk is a refurbished K67 kiosk, a modernist design gem associated with ad hoc post-Soviet spaces, chip stalls, newspaper stands, student cafes, and shelters, which evokes a legacy of European unity and collaboration.

As well as DJ sets, there'll be meditation and yoga workshops, dance classes, and "grief raves" where clubbers can request tracks that remind them of absent or lost loved ones. It will be located in London's Canary Wharf before eventually touring Europe and the UK.

Nicholson got the idea in the debilitating aftermath of the deaths of her mother, sister, sister's partner in a helicopter crash, and her father of cancer a few years later year.

During times of grief or anxiety, it can be difficult to find joy. Dancefloors bring people together in powerful ways, and allow people to process complex feelings in a physical way.

"The dance floor has been a space of silence and safety as I have navigated the many great losses and painful grief in my life throughout the past decade, and having successfully installed public realm projects around grief and mental health over the past two years, we have noticed a distinct change in how people wish to connect and come together. There is an overwhelming need to shake out your grief physically right now," said Nicholson.

She further points out that dance is used in funerary rituals around the world, but particularly among indigenous nations, such as in Māori, Yoruba, and Jamaican cultures, Unsurprisingly however, this expression is not common in grieving periods on the British Isles.

"Improvised dance - where you just move to show how you feel - improves divergent thinking and the ability to solve problems," Nicholson told the Guardian. "But we generally don't consider ordinary dancers who aren't particularly good to be valuable even though the dancefloor can be a site of solidarity, repair and even healing."

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