30th July 2026: HXR hold Grief Ceremony outside JPMorgan offices
On 30th July, HXR members, Scientists on Survival and friends held a grief ceremony outside JPMorgan Embankment Offices in London.
Photos: Sennen Powell
Our previous visits to JPMorgan have included a climate inquest, a ‘die-in’ , a climate photographic exhibition, staff outreach, sticking posters to their windows, delivering carefully researched letters and displaying placards and a huge banner.
Four years ago, six HXR members broke JPM’s Canary Wharf windows during the July/22 heatwave to sound the alarm on the health harms of their fossil fuel investments. Earlier this year they were found unanimously not guilty by a jury.
JPMorgan is the world’s biggest financier of fossil fuel extraction despite its own economists warning in their leaked 2020 report “Risky Business” that “… it is clear that the earth is on an unsustainable trajectory. Something will have to change at some point if the human race is going to survive”.
On this occasion the group gathered, not to remonstrate with the bank, but to create a community space to express their grief for our planet, for ourselves and for our communities.
In opening the ceremony the complexity of our beautiful planet was named, and thanks given to the interconnected ecosystems that enable “the communities we build and love in”.
Photos: Kirk Pritchard
Participants then formed a circle outside JPMorgan’s doors, around a centrepiece of water, candle, stone and flowers. Members shared grief testimonials including prose and poetry, attesting to our individual and collective grief in the face of the climate and ecological crisis, untethered colonialism and capitalism and the failure of human societies to respond.
Photos: Sennen Powell & Kirk Pritchard
The group then sat in quiet contemplation, acknowledging their grief while violins played. Participants then each lay a piece of Welsh slate, on which they had written words to express their climate grief, in front of JP Morgan’s doors while singing the beautiful Hebridean mourning song.
Before ending JPMorgan employees were addressed directly and the hope expressed that they might “…join us in our gratitude and in our grief, acknowledge our shared dependence on this beautiful interconnected planet, and in this knowledge, and through this grief, have the courage to be transformed”.
Photos: Sennen Powell
A letter to JPM staff was delivered to the offices, and to make it available to all, a QR code was shared on posters and on leaflets offered to JPM staff and other passersby during the ceremony. Staff were invited to join the ceremony at any stage, although none chose to do so.
Photos: Kirk Pritchard
For more information about tending grief in community please see the following links or write to us at contact@healthforxr.com.
With thanks to grief teachers Malidoma and Sobonfu Somé , Francis Wellar, and Sophy Banks whose work helped shape the ceremony.
Grief tending in community – https://grieftending.org/
Centre for Climate Psychology’s “tending our grief for the world” workshops – https://climatepsychologycentre.org/
Watch our instagram photo story HERE
Read our letter to JPMorgan staff HERE