Sussex to host the inaugural Death Festival

Louise Harman - University of Sussex alum, artist and educator Louise Harman was instrumental in creation of festival Festival to shed light on the taboo subject of death The Festival is the brainchild of Dame Jude Kelly in collaboration with Michael Attenborough OBE - A unique new festival will take place at Attenborough Centre for Creative Arts (ACCA) this weekend (11-12 November), with the aim of encouraging conversations around death and dying. Taking place at the ACCA, the performing arts centre at the University of Sussex, the Death Festival will explore death and dying through two days of talks, concerts, performances, workshops and installations. Instrumental in the Festival's creation was Louise Harman , a University of Sussex alum who is the founder of "Louise on Death", an initiative set up to tackle the taboo subject of death, which won the Sussex Innovation Centre's Social Impact Award University of Sussex in 2021. The brainchild of Jude Kelly, Founder and CEO of The WOW Foundation, the inaugural Death Festival has been programmed by Jenna Mason in collaboration with the writer and activist, Catherine Mayer and theatre director and ACCA patron, Michael Attenborough. For Louise Harman, the festival is the chance to discuss a subject that is very close to her heart: exploring society's cultural dissociation with death and its impacts on our everyday lives. Louise said: "Death is symbolic of our relationship with things that we cannot control. It's a huge topic to explore of which I hope to do in the long run, while linking to the importance of arts education, which is relentlessly undervalued and seen as a soft subject.