Hospice UK joins forces with the Death Festival

This November, the new Death Festival for the public will hear from academics, philosophers, artists, scientists, funeral directors, medical practitioners, anthropologists and broadcasters, airing and sharing their different perspectives on death.

Like Dying Matters, Death Festival aims to open up conversations about death and dying in creative, community-orientated ways. The programme offers an exciting variety of voices, perspectives and experiences to share the one thing we all have in common, our death.

A range of artists and community groups from Hospice UK’s Dying Matters campaign will be contributing to the festival.

It will be a chance to see the first ever public display of photographs from Hospice UK’s collaboration with world-renowned photographer Rankin. Consisting of 8 striking portraits, this exhibition will capture the universal – but often unique experience – of grief.

The Dying Matters Community Grant awardees will be bringing their projects to be experienced by festival attendees:

Single Homeless Project will be running a creative workshop exploring the contextual issues of death and grief experienced by people who are homeless.

BRiGHTBLACK Productions will be installing ‘1000 Conversations About Death’, an immersive video game environment in which participants can have interactive one-to-one encounters in the video world, to explore how they feel about death.

WomenZone, poet Sharena Lee Satti and Dr Jamilla Hussain will bring an installation that explores Pakistani women’s experience of caring for people at the end of life.

Death Festival is the brainchild of Jude Kelly, founder of the WOW - Women of the World Festival and the international charity, The WOW Foundation.

Through two days of talks, concerts, performances, workshops and installations, the programme will encourage us to consider death and dying. It was created in collaboration with writer and activist, Catherine Mayer, theatre director, Michael Attenborough and artist and social innovator, Louise Harman (Louise on Death).

Death Festival takes place on the 11th & 12th November, at the Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts in Brighton.

View the full programme, and buy your tickets.