Lifting The Lid Festival of Death and Dying

 

Lifting the Lid is an annual, online, international, online festival that lifts the lid on everything death & dying through conversations, interactive events, workshops, art and craft sessions, live music poetry and performance. It is informative, creative, fun, joyful and life affirming, and caters for people of all levels of interest.

Lifting the Lid was co-founded by artist Jo Dagless and funeral director and Death Cafe host Victoria Keen who met in 2020 during a film project ‘Conversations On Life and Death’.

Around 2500 attendees from 32+ countries have come together to take part in around 200 virtual events so far. People are able to find out as much or as little as they like and are welcome to dip in and out of the weekend programme as they feel comfortable.

The positive feedback during and after the first 2 festivals was overwhelming and as hoped the events started to get people opening up to an acceptance of the inevitability of loss and impermanence. We hope to continue taking some of the fear of death away so people can ask questions and talk openly and honestly about their experiences.

We delve into a variety of subjects from planning your own funeral or making your own shroud, to learning about the history of funeral rites and rituals. We look at the growing trend for green funerals and what you can do at home for the dead and the dying. We have explored death in film and computer games, the history of mourning jewellery, humour, folklore, and sharing the ways we remember the dead as well as looking at managing grief and the after death administration for someone you know.

Through the incredibly hard work of Jo and Victoria and their small team of volunteers Lifting the Lid has now become a successful annual event. Lifting the Lid is available for free to those who are unable to afford the suggested ticket price and we want to continue to make this unique online event truly accessible to all.

All those involved give up their time on a voluntary basis so any donations will go towards paying for essentials like the virtual platform, creating engaging marketing and sicial media content and editing and publishing video recordings of festival events so they are accessible to anyone unable to attend the live event.

We thank you in advance for anything you can spare to support this important event.

Jo and Victoria

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