There are many people to thank for their part in this innovative and exciting piece of work. Firstly to those who were with me at the outset and at the heart of generating the idea for the work. I give my heartfelt thanks to them for their inspiration, ideas and passion and our times together on this piece of work. These were my very special friends and work colleagues: Melanie Young, now Senior Commissioning Manager at Birmingham North and East Primary Care Trust, who at the time was Network Manager of the Pan Birmingham End of Life Care Network, and Reverend Canon Dr. James Woodward now at St. George's Chapel Windsor, who until recently was Director of the Leveson Centre for Ageing, Social Policy and Spirituality, and Master of the Foundation of Lady Katherine Leveson in Temple Balsall. Melanie in her network role had initiated the public awareness campaign .Living well until the end of life'. James and I, as supporters of this campaign, were keen to generate other campaign activities to facilitate and allow the public to become so much more familiar with and comfortable about aspects of dying and death in our lives. The idea for this work and exhibition was .dreamed up' at the Ikon Gallery Café, around the corner here from Centenary Square, over a delicious meal and lots of good red wine!

I translated our ideas into the.Images project. So now all those involved in the workings of the project more than deserve my special thanks. They are:

Ade Marsh, the Project Manager who as a youth and community worker and photographer has brought just the combination of expertise we needed to access and work with our communities in these ways. His enthusiasm and dual skill set have been instrumental in achieving our aims for this work.

Refkah A'Court and those in the arts and ceremonies organisation ONCE. They have devised a means of conducting a spontaneous performance with you the public as part of the exhibition. This will demonstrate other ways of both validating our life experiences and offering other ways we can do this with each other. This is another powerful form of using art as the driver for community development.

Dr. Michele Aaron Senior Lecturer American and Canadian Studies Birmingham University whose special expertise lies in analysing our visual culture, the everyday media images, the messages these convey as part of our living culture and how helpful or not these are to living with dying and death in the 21st century. I couldn't have done without her thoughtful critique as this work progressed. Equally thanks for her contribution to and organisation of an academic conference to support this exhibition and work which took place at Birmingham University on June 26th 2 0 0 9 – Envisaging Death: Visual Culture and Dying.

Una Devlin and Tom Stanhope of Jovian Productions who have studiously and with amazing attention to detail mounted this exhibition. All that you will see here has been organised by and prepared for display by Jovian Productions.

And finally my thanks to NHS West Midlands for recognising the importance of empowering the public as a major part of .Investing for Health' our strategic direction for the health and wellbeing of the population in the West Midlands.

We are supported then to tap into and access our own resources so we can more easily engage in and open a dialogue about living, dying and death and move more easily to .saying the unsayable'.

Pauline Smith
End of Life and Dementia Lead NHS West Midlands