Our good friends at Life. Death. Whatever. have written a brilliant piece today about the current shock / horror media coverage of the advertising campaign for a funeral price comparison website that was rejected by Transport for London because of the potentially offensive nature of the adverts.
Read it here.
We echo everything said in the piece, and by Louise in her interview this morning on the BBC World Service ‘World Update’ programme – listen here (starts at 48.25)
Here at GFG Towers we rarely get a night out, so it was rather a shock to get to go to the cinema twice in one weekend – so much so that we’ve only just recovered enough to write about it. (One film is out there available for you to go and see, while the other is yet to be screened for the public, we went to a private screening by invitation only – a first for the GFG!)
Links to trailers for both films are at the foot of this page.
On Friday, we joined the audience at the London UK premier of A Love That Never Dies, the film made by Jimmy Edmonds and Jane Harris for The Good Grief Project as a way of honouring the memory of their son Josh, who died in a road accident six years ago. (A post on this blog featured the film Jane and Jimmy made of his funeral in 2011)
A Love That Never Dies portrays the road trip that Jane and Jimmy made across the United States, meeting other bereaved parents on the way and hearing them talk about their grief. The film is beautiful, the stories powerful and compelling, and the portrayal of grief in its many forms is unflinching and unafraid. Some people may find this film difficult to watch because of the raw emotion voiced by parents whose children’s lives have been cut short. We found it captivating. This is an important film. If you want to truly learn from people who are living with grief, then find a screening near you and go and see it.
The second film of the weekend was shown to an invited audience only at the Duke of York’s Picture House in Brighton, the oldest cinema still currently in use in the UK. Dead Good is an independent feature documentary following the work of the team at ARKA Original Funerals, one of the GFG Recommended funeral directors and pioneering champions of empowering families to reclaim the care of their dead.
Three extraordinary families allowed the filmmakers unprecedented access to follow their journeys through the limbic space between a death occurring and the funeral ceremony, and as an audience we were privileged to share their experiences as they were gently supported to be as involved as they wanted in the care of the person who had died, and the creation of the ceremony to honour their memory.
Thought provoking, stunningly crafted and shot – and occasionally unexpectedly humorous, this is a ground-breaking film that challenges much of what we have come to accept as being the norm regarding arranging a funeral.
The standing ovation for Rehana Rose, the director, producer and cinematographer responsible for creating this beautiful film was utterly deserved.
Editor’s note: Although it is not yet on general release, the team behind Dead Good hope that it will be picked up by a distributor or screened at a film festival soon. Follow them on social media to stay informed @DeadGoodFilm on Twitter and Facebook
See the trailer for A Love That Never Dies here:
And the sneak preview of Dead Good here:
Photograph by Jayne Lloyd
While it might look like there is a serious game of ‘swapsies’ happening here, the joint winners of The Most Significant Contribution to the Understanding of Death Award 2017 (Lucy Coulbert, left and Liz Rothschild, right) are actually making sure they receive the correct statue from presenter Louise Winter.
From ‘The Judges’ Decisions’:
“With 18 finalists, comprising people, projects, organisations and events, this was a particularly difficult category to judge. We finally decided that we would make a joint award to two individuals, both of whom have been outstanding for their dedication to changing perception of death, albeit in very different ways with the runner up chosen for the impact they have had on communities in Scotland.
Our first winner has spent years challenging the biggest taboo in our society through her work in many different fields; celebrancy, creating events, organising festivals, running death cafes, teaching, performing and at the same time managing a natural burial ground. Her one-woman show has reached thousands of people, provoking thought, discussion and change in attitude.
Our second winner has set herself the task of cutting through the c**p and reaching the decision makers in government to try and drive change to the current, inadequate support for families needing financial assistance with funerals. Her experience of helping people on benefits and her straight talking approach has earned her the respect of all of those she encounters.”
This year’s joint winners are Liz Rothschild and Lucy Coulbert
Runner up: Good Life, Good Death, Good Grief – It Takes a Village
The 2017 Good Funeral Awards were generously sponsored by Greenfield Creations
Last year’s awards ceremony in central London
It’s that time of year again – nominations open today for this year’s Good Funeral Awards, the Oscars of the death trade. Since 2012, the Good Funeral Awards have been celebrating excellence in the funeral world and have championed the pioneers, the bold and the brave, as well as the under-sung hard workers behind the scenes.
Last year there was an unprecedented number of entries, and the awards were presented at a glittering lunchtime ceremony attended by hundreds of people from across the country.
Coverage of the event in the media was overwhelmingly positive, see a piece in The Independent here and an article in The Guardian here, with national and local newspapers and radio stations all fascinated by something that journalists perceive as peculiar, but that we feel is richly deserved – recognition of outstanding work by those involved in caring for the dying, dead or bereaved.
Once again, there is an opportunity to nominate anyone who you feel deserves recognition or appreciation for their work in what is often a much misunderstood or maligned industry, or to enter yourself or the company you work for.
To enter for an award, simply go to the Good Funeral Awards website and you will find the entry form at the foot of the ‘Nominate’ page. Download it, complete it and send it in along with the entry fee* if applicable.
Every entry is carefully considered before The Long List is published in August. Winners will be announced at the awards ceremony in September.
To nominate a person or company, please write to the organisers at info@goodfuneralawards.co.uk and tell us why you feel they deserve to be a winner. Please ensure that you include their contact details including their e-mail address, and the category you would like to nominate them under.
All nominees will be contacted and invited to submit an official entry in the category they feel most appropriate, along with the entry fee* if applicable.
*The entry fee applicable to most categories is intended to help save the organisers from sinking under the weight of administering over 600 nominations and associated entries. If you want to nominate someone and pay the entry fee for them that’s absolutely fine, this happened quite a lot last year and nominees were both touched and very grateful.
You have plenty of time, nominations close in July. And tickets aren’t yet on sale for the awards ceremony. But you know what they say about the early bird.
This year’s categories are listed below. Aficionados of the Good Funeral Awards will notice a few new titles – we’ve tried to reflect the changes we are seeing in the world of funerals and to make sure that there’s a category for everyone.
One of the organisation that we rate very highly here at GFG Towers, The Foundation for Infant Loss Training, is holding a series of practical study days for funeral professionals in infant loss training over the coming months, and has asked us to spread the word about them. These study days are a superb opportunity to gain valuable skills that will assist in giving excellent care to families following the death of a baby.
We are hugely supportive of the work being done by Chantal and her team, and will be going along to one of these days and writing about it here on the GFG blog.
Here’s what’s on offer:
• Bereavement Photography workshop – all props are provided including casting and inkless hand and foot print kits to demonstrate on our life like dolls
• Memory Making
• Angel Gowns
• Parents’ perspectives of their own loss, identifying good and poor practice from funeral directors
• Memory Boxes
• A demonstration of the Flexmort Cuddle Cot and its benefits
• Resources for a Baby’s funeral
• What is important to parents when their baby has died?
• The concerns of what to say and what not to say to parents
• Retaining a sense of innocence
• Caring for and handling a baby (including the baby’s likely physical appearance)
• The Child Funeral Charity
• Legal Viability, Legal issues, The Coroner, Registering baby and Post Mortem
• Signposting families to support following loss: Counselling, National Charities and Bereavement support
All delegates will take away with them our accredited Infant loss e-learning so that your funeral organisation can be fully trained in this area (unlimited numbers)
Venues & dates:
Exeter – Saturday 1 April
Southampton – Saturday 22 April
London – Saturday 29 April
Cardiff – Friday 2 June
Birmingham – Saturday 8 July
Newcastle – Wednesday 12 July
Manchester – Friday 2 September
10am -4pm
Delegate rate: £100 per head to include lunch, refreshments, E-learning, certificate and all materials and resources.
Numbers are capped to 25 a session so early booking is advised.
Book now: Email – info@chantallockey.co.uk
The tireless and indefatigable Dr. Chantal Lockey has been in touch with us at GFG Towers about the upcoming National Conference in Pregnancy and Infant Loss that she is organising, which is taking place in London in early March.
If you are a professional who works with bereaved parents in any capacity, or a parent who has been bereaved, this full day event looks hugely worthwhile attending. Tickets are still available if you are interested – all details here.
Chantal is particularly keen to receive nominations for funeral arrangers or funeral directors who have been exceptional in their work with an infant’s funeral. If you have a colleague or a staff member who you think has been outstanding when helping bereaved parents, there are just a few days left to nominate them.
Nominations close on Monday 6th February – e-mail Chantal directly if you think you know someone who deserves recognition for this incredibly difficult and sensitive aspect of the undertaker’s work – her contact details are info@chantallockey.co.uk
Fran will be attending the conference and presenting this award, so in the spirit of fairness and impartiality we aren’t able to nominate any of our fabulous recommended funeral directors ourselves, otherwise we would be busy doing so.
It’s over to you to send in the names of anyone you think should be considered for it.
Hope to see at least some of you there on the day.
Ru’s opening words to the assembled guests struck a chord with many who were there, so we thought we’d put them on the blog for the whole world to read. Over to you Rupert.
“Welcome everyone to the Good Funeral Awards 2016!
It started off, as so many good things do, in a sweaty basement in Bournemouth, and has grown into this glamorous Metropolitan lunchtime bunfight.
My name is Ru Callender and I should be standing here with my wife, Claire – sadly, she’s got flu. Together, we run The Green Funeral Company in Devon, and we used to be the Enfants Terrible of the undertaking world. Self taught, stubborn, scruffy, we still use our family Volvo instead of a hearse – but as we’ve been doing it for 17 years, we’re probably just terrible…
Today is a genuinely unusual mélange of the alternative and the conventional funeral world, and it has probably taken longer than the Good Friday agreement took to get everyone in the same room.
You are here because someone thinks you’re great. Let that sink in.
Even if you asked them to.
This gathering is largely due to Charles Cowling and crew of the Good Funeral Guide, and also to the original renegade masters, the Natural Death Centre, both of whose organisations dared to believe that ordinary people could deal with the gritty detail of death, the truth about what happens to our bodies, that a deep, internal understanding of death is part of our birthright, part and parcel of being human.
And what they did – brace yourself, maybe have a glug of wine to steady yourself here, was to treat the public as adults, to include them in a conversation about the one thing that will happen to each and every one of us.
They presumed, as we all should, that people can handle more than the protective narrative that is fed to them.
They were right.
It was thought wildly radical then, now it just seems honest and transparent.
I said funeral world because I refuse to use the word industry. Making computers is an industry. Fashion is an industry. Even getting fit is an industry. I don’t decry industry. It’s necessary.
But death is a true mystery, and working with it should be a vocation, a real calling, and if you’re not meant to be here, if ego, or an understandable search for meaning in your life has misled you here, then death has a way of calling your bluff. You are either initiated, in or out.
This work, the real work of dealing with death and loss is not glamorous, however closely it nearly rhymes with sex, however interesting it makes us appear to those who unfortunately have to work in jobs they hate to pay the bills, and that matter little.
This work, done properly, is incredibly stressful.
It’s exhausting, frightening, physically, emotionally and existentially challenging, but it is also deeply, deeply rewarding.
Burn out is a real risk, or worse, an unconscious hardening of your outer emotional skin – these are the risks you face depending on whether you fully engage with it or not.
Breakdown or bravado. Truly a metaphor for our times.
So, if you work with death – florist, celebrant, undertaker or chaplain, particularly if you are new to it, you really have to let it in.
Go deeper.
Feel it. Fear it. Don’t pretend to love it , because the only thing worse than death is not death – and then, if you can, let it go.
This world is also open to all.
Undertaking is completely unregulated, and should remain so in my opinion, not just because no amount of qualifications can teach you what to say to the mother of a dead child, that is an instinctive language that rises unbidden from the heart, but also because we are all amateurs when staring into the abyss, all professionals when faced with a dead body.
And they are OUR dead, yours and mine. We are all funeral directors eventually.
It is a shared mystery and your guess as to what it means, and your actions as to what to do are as valid as mine, or the Church, or the Humanists.
Nobody knows for sure.
The mechanics of what needs to be done are easy, I promise. Keep bodies cold. Put them in a suitable receptacle. Carry them, bury or burn them.
The rest, the words, the rituals, the how we do this, you KNOW, deep down what is right for you. You know.
But here I am, bringing you all down at a funeral award convention – I should get a prize for that!
But just indulge me one last time before we start bringing on the champs, and this celebration of the real change that has happened gets underway –
Euphemisms.
They cover the kitchen floor of bereavement like a spilled cat litter tray.
They protect no-one, they fool no-one, they confuse children. They are well meaning, but they are wrong.
I’m only going to take on one here, and I apologise if anyone has to amend their speech or their website as a result.
Loved ones.
Not everyone is loved, some because they have led sad, lonely lives, others because they did bad things.
They die too. They need funerals and their families are broken, and the depth of their pain makes the phrase ‘Loved one’ seem like a jeer.
Just saying.
So call them the dead, the dead one, the dead person, anything other than ‘loved one’. Call them by their name!
I know it’s awkward, but it will spare you the look of contempt you get when you say it to the wrong person.
Lecture over.”
Now that the sun has come out a bit and the Wimbledon quarter finals have been reached, the attraction of spending daylight time at conferences and seminars about funerals has waned a little – however, the GFG is nothing if not self sacrificing, so this week that’s just what we’ve been doing.
Also, having rather cheekily asked for a free ticket to the CBCE conference, which is organised by The Cremation Society of Great Britain and The Federation of Burial and Cremation Authorities (who were not on friendly terms with us back in 2014, see here) – and kindly been given one, it would have been churlish not to go along.
So on Monday and Tuesday this week we joined members and delegates in Stratford-upon-Avon, and sat in on some really rather excellent talks. Among them were presentations from some good friends of the GFG and people whose work we are very interested in: – Dr. John Troyer PhD from the Centre for Death and Society spoke on the subject of ‘All things dead are new again’ and gave a fascinating insight into society’s approach to death since the 1970’s, that period of social and political upheaval with very bad fashion. Did you know, for instance, that between 1968 and 1972 there were around 1,200 books published on the subject of death and bereavement? There was a huge interest in debating death and end of life issues that is largely now overshadowed by more recent ideas of death being a taboo.
Dr. Brian Parsons, (who has lots of letters after his name – more about him here) illustrated the exceptional promotion of cremation in the South London area between 1914 and 1939 and how this was achieved, showing us advertisements and leaflets from early in the 20th century and demonstrating how society’s view of cremation in this part of the country was changed in a much faster way than elsewhere in the UK as crematoria sprang up in close proximity to each other. (By 1939, within an 11.5 mile radius of the offices of Frederick Paine in Kingston, there were six crematoria to choose from.
Sandy Sullivan from Resomation Ltd gave an update on the developments so far, as he continues to push for the necessary legislative change in the UK to enable the first installation to take place here. In the USA there are three Resomation units in operation and over 2,000 Resomations have been carried out. No longer partnered by Co-operative Funeralcare, Sandy has a new partner in The LBBC Group, and his enthusiasm is undimmed by the long years of trying to get a Resomation unit operative here in Britain.
A second fascinating presentation yesterday came from Tony Ennis, CEO of ecoLegacy, whose ecoLation process is described as a disruptive, next-generation, environmental and ethical alternative to burial and cremation. Using freezing, heat and pressure, the ecoLation process is a way of breaking down the body to an elemental level until the only thing left is biologically inert dust. Half a billion dollars of equipment is to be deployed in the introduction of ecoLation units in the next five years, with the first commercial unit to be launched in Dublin in October. We’ll be going to have a look at it for you.
James Norris, our good friend from Dead Social and the Digital Legacy Association gave warning about the need for preparation for our death online and explored how we remember those who have died through social media and their ongoing online presence. He talked about the resources available for professionals from the DLA and how these could be used as a soft approach to open conversations about death by asking, for example, whether you have a password / security code to access your phone, tablet or laptop (the vast majority of us do) and whether you have told anyone else what that is. Well, have you? If you haven’t, then the huge amount of information held on your devices won’t be accessible when you die.
Dr. Mary Ross-Davie, the Education Project Manager for Maternal Health, NHS Education for Scotland recounted the multi-agency coordinated response to the Rt. Hon. Lord Bonomy’s report on infant cremation, and the resulting introduction of a new Code of Practice and new guidance for professionals working with newly bereaved parents. Of particular note is the newly accepted definition of ashes ‘All that is left in the cremator at the end of the cremation process following the removal of any metal’ – irrespective of their composition.
There was a detailed and comprehensive presentation from Dr. Anne Eyre PhD. looking at dealing with disasters and the implications for death care professionals. Drawing on her personal and professional experience, Dr. Eyre talked in depth about the essential need, both social and symbolic, to re-identify the dead in any disaster situation as persons, not just bodies, and how critical it is that people bereaved by disaster be given choice and control. In disasters, a person becomes an object, one of the dead, and society insists that disaster victims be treated as persons, not bodies – a person-to-object-to-person transformation through painstaking efforts to re-personalise the dead.
“Every effort needs to be made to turn bodies into persons. In this process of personalization, considerable respect is shown in handling bodies.
It is clear that something very important and very fundamental is occurring, for the dead are not socially dead unless the right steps are taken leading to an individual’s funeral.
To the dead, it may not matter, but it does to the living… the living will, if at all possible, not let go of the dead until the body involved is respectfully converted back into an individual person.”
Other speakers were Leona McAllister from Plotbox, who told the delegates about how the future ‘Memorial Parks’ could look, and P. Scott Odom, director / architect from GoldenAge – Mausoleum Solutions Ltd. who talked about community mausoleums in the USA.
The long day yesterday ended for us with the Presidents Panel, where four representatives from different trade organisations (SAIF, FBCA, NAMM and the Co-operative Funeral Services Managers Association) gave their thoughts about various subjects to the room. It was time to pack up and come home.
Like you, at GFG Towers we’ve been waiting for summer to start. No sign so far, so rather than watching the umbrellas go up at Wimbledon yet again, we’ve wangled invitations to a whole number of gatherings of the great and the good in funeralworld. Indoor ones.
First up was a chance an invitation from Anne Barber of Civil Ceremonies Ltd to speak to a room full of celebrants at historic Buckden Towers last Saturday on the subject of ‘What lies ahead’.
In between a presentation about the Wesley System, a delightfully entertaining account from Evelyn Temple on becoming a funeral director, an encouragement to embrace Tea, Cake and Death (by the GFG Editor wearing her Poetic Endings hat) – and a rather stern warning to celebrants about the advance of direct cremations from Catherine Powell, we had a chance to talk about the future of the GFG and what we want to achieve. Despite the lack of Powerpoint presentation (and indeed any preparation other than a few scribbled notes; the fallout from the result of the EU referendum 24 hours earlier had sort of taken precedence over formulating a professional speech..!) the audience seemed to be interested to hear what we have up our sleeves. We met some very nice people, and got to hang out with them for a ‘Damage Limitation’ workshop at the end of the day where various disastrous funeral scenarios were posited and suggestions for remedying the situations shared.
Next up was a 200 mile round trip to Birmingham yesterday to the ICCM Seminar on Tackling Funeral Poverty. This was a corker! Delegates from across the sector of cemetery and crematorium management gathered together with a smattering of outsiders to listen to six speakers – Simon Cox from Royal London, Alex Strangwayes-Booth from the BBC, Heather Kennedy from Quaker Social Action, Nick Willcocks from yourfuneralchoice.com, Martin Birch from Cardiff City Council and Howard Hodgson… a well known name in the funeral industry.
Simon Cox kicked off the proceedings with a review of the Royal London 2015 findings and a sneak preview of the 2016 findings. His overview of the rising costs of funerals and the lukewarm government response to the Work and Pensions Select Committee’s recommendations was informative and detailed, and he ended with a warning about the projected cost of a funeral reaching £10,000 by 2033 if average funeral costs continue to rise on the same trajectory as in recent years.
Alex’s presentation detailed her research into the rising number of Public Health Funerals in the UK for a report for BBC News. She made a Freedom of Information request to all the councils responsible for carrying out Public Health Funerals to discover costs and numbers from 2010 to 2014.
Of 409 councils responsible for Public Health Funerals, 300 responded fully, providing her with months of data crunching to discover some fascinating and alarming facts. The North West of England carries out the most Public Health Funerals, the South East region has shown the biggest rise in numbers during the time period examined (32%), the South West region showed the biggest rise in cost to local authorities of Public Health Funerals (63%). And Birmingham carried out 245 Public Health Funerals in 2014. Councils recover approximately 50% of the costs involved, which amount to £1.7m p.a. Alex noted a huge discrepancy in the amount paid out by local authorities for each funeral, ranging between £300 and £2,000, and noted that there is no baseline.
During questions to the first two speakers, Julie Dunk from the ICCM spoke about the huge variation in the standard of provision of Public Health Funerals across the UK. Some local authorities offer a service with a minister, others just delivery to the cemetery or crematorium. There is no legal requirement to offer anything other than just the disposal of the body, but particularly in local authorities where Public Health Funerals come under the department for bereavement services, the standard of provision of funerals seems to be better. A national minimum standard would be generally approved of, but with ever dwindling council budgets, this scenario seems a long way away.
Angela Abbott, Bereavement Services Team Leader from Milton Keynes Council, shared her innovative solution to the quality and cost of providing Public Health Funerals – she and a colleague carry them out themselves. When they realised over £150,000 had gone out of the Milton Keynes council coffers to pay funeral directors to provide funeral services in recent years, they rolled up their sleeves and started collecting bodies and ordering coffins directly. As word got out, families who wanted some help with logistics but didn’t want to use a funeral director’s services got to hear about what Angela and James were doing, and they have now helped around 20 DIY families as well as carrying out 60 or so Public Health Funerals. The savings made to the council budget have allayed any concerns from above, and the quality of funerals they provide now meet Angela’s exacting standards – ministers, flowers and music are all a matter of course.
After coffee, we sat back to hear a response from Heather Kennedy, who talked about her work at QSA, the Funeral Poverty Alliance and the Fair Funerals Campaign. To date, 560 funeral director branches have signed up to the Fair Funerals Pledge representing 15% of the industry. She outlined some of the things that the Fair Funerals Campaign are asking for: municipal funeral services, setting of standard fees, better access to public health funerals, transparent fees and partnership with other departments.
Heather was followed by Nick Willcocks from yourfuneralchoice.com, the online price comparison website. He outlined the need for reliable online price comparison of funeral director services and explained how the website worked – and got rather a rough ride from a FD among the audience who seemed annoyed that the NAFD hadn’t been asked first before the website was launched.
We retired for lunch before the questioning became too tetchy, and sat with the lovely Charles Howlett from Chilterns Crematorium who talked about the huge changes he has seen during his life in the industry, and how much he welcomed discussions about doing funerals better rather than the merits of various cremator machinery, as ICCM meetings of the past had tended to focus on. Then we were back in the room for the last two speakers, and very interesting they were too.
Martin Birch talked about the municipal funeral service that has been provided for residents in Cardiff for 18 years by the council, in partnership with local funeral directors who tender for the opportunity. This service is available to any resident in Cardiff, and helps control local costs, offering a quality funeral with a hearse and one limousine, all FD services including collection, care, unlimited viewing during office hours and including one out of hours visit all for £1,030. Martin cited the local average costs for a funeral where cremation is chosen including disbursements other than a minister / celebrant as £4,500, whereas the comparable Cardiff City Funeral Service costs £1,708. Similarly local average costs for a funeral where burial is chosen are £5,000, while the CCFS offering is £2,320. Twelve per cent of funerals in Cardiff are carried out by CCFS.
We liked this very much indeed!
Then finally, the last speaker stepped up to speak about The Fashion of Death. Howard Hodgson was never going to be uncontroversial. We listened. We looked round the room and everyone was listening. And we asked him whether he would like to write a guest blog for the GFG. Watch this space – he was delighted to accept.
Just as a final note, at the end of the seminar there was a sharing session and the chair invited the various speakers to join different tables and talk about what they had heard during the day. He also suggested that the funeral directors sitting together at a table might like to do the same, as the ICCM members would undoubtedly be interested in hearing their thoughts. There was a flurry of movement as people rearranged themselves in groups.. and the FDs stayed exactly where they were. They didn’t move.
We mused on this metaphor as we drove back in the rain. The times they are a’changing, but some people just don’t want to budge.
Anyway, tonight we’re off to a party for the First Findings of The Corpse Project. We’ll report back. And next week holds a Cremation and Burial Communication and Education three day conference and a Child and Baby Funeral Choice seminar from the Child Funeral Charity. Lots going on at the moment so it’s probably just as well the sun hasn’t made an appearance yet.
Guest post from Cara Mair and Tora Colwill
Hello there! As long time fans of all things Good Funeral Guide we are excited to be featured here in the blog!
We are Brighton funeral directors Cara from Arka and Tora from The Modern Funeral, collaborating as The Brighton Death Festival to bring death interest events and to contribute to making the conversations around death and dying a little louder.
This year for Dying Matters Awareness Week, our event is being held on the afternoon of Saturday 14th May at The Extra Mural Chapel in the middle of the tomb trail on land managed by Brighton council. Since we’re in Brighton, and we are all seeking to find our own language for the conversation, we want to make it as open, fearless and interesting as we can. In a safe, beautiful setting, there will be tranquil spaces set aside for reflection and conversation and we’ve contacted a broad range of people with various talents to contribute to the day.
There will be information about funeral options, including demonstrations of how to make and decorate coffins. There will be musicians and poets to be discovered around the graveyard. A performance about death ritual within the chapel space has been designed to spark off thoughts about what happens to our bodies between the point of death and the funeral whatever shape that may take.
We want the afternoon to be a chance for likeminded people to come and share thoughts and plans that relate death and funerals – and we’d love your contribution!
Please get in touch if you’d like to know more:
Tora 01273569 052 tora@themodernfuneral.com
Cara 01273 621444 info@arkafunerals.co.uk
You can follow us on facebook:
www.facebook.com/brightondeathfestival
www.facebook.com/modernfunerals
www.facebook.com/arkaoriginalfunerals
Or find more information at www.brightondeathfestival.com
