LET'S TALK ABOUT A NEW CIRCLE OF LIFE
Activity and Workshops 19 & 20 Nov 2021
These events are part of the Being Human Festival, the UK's only national festival of the humanities. Being Human is an annual festival that aims to engage the public with the very best of innovative research taking place across the humanities. Led by the School of Advanced Study, University of London, in Partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the British academy. The events are hosted by staff and students at Liverpool John Moores University.
The theme for the festival 2021 is "renewal". We are offering a series of activities that allow the public to explore current grief and burial practices in the UK, and sustainable alternatives becoming avaiable.
Activities are as follows:
Friday 19th - Walking Death Café
The route will be around significant locations, such as cemeteries and places of worship in Toxteth and the surrounding area. Led by death studies researchers, participants will be encouraged to talk openly about their experiences with death and but more specifically current unsustainable burial practices and sustainable alternatives.
Saturday 20th - Workshops at the Granby Winter Garden
Stitching Elegies led by sustainable fashion designer, Emma Summerscales, where participants will crochet a foundation chain and stitch onto a sample of sustainable fabric in the shape of a significant word or poem. This is inspired by the Infinity Burial Suit which has mycelium embedded in the crochet netting to aid the decomposition.
Graveyards of tomorrow led by death studies researcher Amanda Kearns-Rulton. Participants will be invited to design/model a sustainable and emotionally supportive urban burial ground, using principles introduced for green burials.
Saturday 20th - Film Screening at the Granby Winter Garden
Following the workshops, a film screening of “Suiting Dennis”, an early adopter of the green burial, will foreground a Q&A about sustainable death, burial and environmental regeneration. A Q&A will follow, hosted by Liverpool LASER.