London Month of the Dead: spooky soirées and morbid musings
Stephen Coates is the co-creator of London Month of the Dead, a fascinating festival of talks, tours and events about death and mortality, running throughout October.
In our latest blog, we find out all about this scintillating series and discover why Stephen and Suzette Field launched their annual festival of the dead.
Left, Suzette Field, centre, Alan Moore, renowned comic book author, right, Stephen Coates
I'm Stephen Coates, I'm the co-curator of the month of the dead with my colleague Suzette Field. We curate all sorts of events throughout the year. But the month of the dead is our annual festival in October.
My partner and I run an arts and events company called Antique Beat, while Suzette’s company, A Curious Invitation, organises large-scale, themed parties. You’ll see on our list of events for London Month of the Dead that Suzette is also a taxidermist. Suzette and I got together about 15 years ago and have been working together ever since. So we've got these parallel organisations that meet to make arts events.
How the London Month of the Dead began
My dad died in 2006, so almost 20 years ago. At the time I didn't react particularly in any way at all. It was a very strange time for me. It wasn't a traditional grieving, let's put it that way. But being an artist I noticed that a year and a half, two years later, I started to get much more interested in making work around death. And I think that was my response to my father's death.
I'm a musician by background. I made an album called London Book of the dead and there's all sorts of collaborations with artists around that. We had an exhibition called The Book of the Dead in the Crypt of Saint Pancras Church a couple of years later. I also started going to death cafés around this time.
When Suzette and I started to work together, we were actually sponsored by Hendrick's Gin; the boutique gin company. They said that they had taken over a beautiful Georgian house in Fitzrovia for a weekend for one of their curious festivals. They asked us to programme a day for them and it happened to be in October. So we were thinking we could do a sort of ‘London Day of the Dead’. We programmed the day of events with a couple of talks, ‘meet the undertaker’, a feast of the dead in the evening, and mask making and a few other activities. It went down a storm; there was big queue of people outside the door trying to get in. So we thought we could do the same thing again next year, but let's do a week of the dead.
It very quickly moved into a month of death events over October. That was 12 or 13 years ago and it just gets bigger and more intense each year.
London Month of the Dead’s mission
Our mission is to inform, entertain and provoke on the subjects of death and mortality. Some events are more macabre, esoteric, but we also offer archaeological, historical and art based talks around the subject. So the idea is to not just be macabre or gothic for the sake of it.
One of this year's talks, for example, is about London's displaced dead, people who committed suicide, who weren't allowed to be buried in conventional churchyards. So on one hand, it can seem like spooky, gothic stuff, but actually there's quite a serious undertone. We want to make it accessible and attractive to people and provoke their curiosity, but with a serious intent beneath it; we're not here to preach though.
Most of the talks are by academics and historians, experts in their field. We do reach out to people if we come across research or a book or we hear about somebody that's doing interesting work. Over the years, because of what we've been doing, we have a very wide network of people who have spoken for us or who are connected with people who they recommend to us. We do get approached quite a lot by people who would like to participate in various ways.
The Magnificent Seven
Part of our mission is to introduce people to cemeteries. We're blessed here in London with lots of churchyards and cemeteries. We've got the so-called Magnificent Seven cemeteries, which are wonderful gardens and parks. When we started out there were very few cultural events happening there. So our events that take place in those churchyards and gardens tend to be very popular.
People used to feel that the only time they could go to a cemetery was either when they were dead or when they were attending a funeral, and that's just not the case. Our guided tours of the catacombs are very popular, with visits to places like the St. Brides charnel house with Yelena that's normally inaccessible to the public; it's a wonderful, strange place.
We also offer visits to see private mausoleua at Highgate, which are not usually open to the public. 20% of all ticket sales go to either the local cemetery where the event is held or charities associated with the venue. The wider good death movement has helped to raise awareness of the Magnificent Seven. We're proud to have been a part of that; for example at Brompton cemetery, where we helped raise money and publicity for the Heritage Lottery Grant funds.
So I think more people do know more now, and bringing a lot of people through - as we've done - has helped word to spread. We find these days that if you say the ‘Magnificent Seven’, quite often people know what you're talking about. Not everybody though and of course, this is quite London-centric. But I think generally there's more openness and awareness of access to the cemeteries.
Brompton Cemetery is unusual because it's actually owned by Royal Parks so it's well funded and very well kept. It's also a thoroughfare from Fulham Road to Brompton Road so it's also well used. That's, definitely the odd one out though. Highgate- which was in ruins in the 70s - was saved through a very active group of friends. Most of the cemeteries have a friends group attached to them and through their work they're completely transformed.
Highgate East is very well cared for and I think funded entirely by donations and charity. Places like Abney Park and Tower Hamlets are controlled by the Local Authority. So they're kind of funded, but in some state of distress and decay as people aren't buried there anymore. Nunhead is in splendid ruins in the South. It's a wonderful place with a very active friends group. West Norwood, I think is also funded by Lambeth Park and run by friends. So it's a combination. I think Nunhead is the one that's probably least funded, it's reliant on donations. It's a wonderful place to wander.
Facing death and mortality
I facilitate a Death Café myself, usually once a month. I've done that for ten years now, and I've found that personally extremely valuable.
“Death Cafés are one of the best ways to get familiar and get less spooked by death. I'd really recommend that to people, because generally speaking, my experience is that you actually leave with a slight skip in your step, rather than gloomy. It's very life affirming.”
That's the best way, I think, for people to get more acquainted with their own mortality. It's really valuable. That's what we're lacking. Society is changing, I think for the better. There’s something in the air.
