Afterlives Art Festival will encourage discussions about death, dying and end-of-life choices at Wanstead Library this month. Vision RCL’s Culture and Library Development Manager Samantha Goodey reports
Afterlives Art Festival is backed by Arts Council England and uses creativity and storytelling to open up conversations about death, dying and end-of-life choices. Bringing death, art and community to libraries across England, the festival comes to Wanstead this month.
Afterlives is the culmination of nearly a decade of pioneering work. In 2017, Redbridge Library Service became the UK’s first Death Positive Library Service, using books, art, film, community events and speculative design installations to help residents engage openly with death and dying as a health and societal issue. Newcastle City Library joined the collaboration, extending the model from East London to the North East in 2019. And this year, Exeter also joins the line-up.
Libraries are uniquely placed to lead this work: unlike hospices or funeral providers, they carry no commercial or institutional stake in end-of-life decisions, making them rare spaces of genuine independence where communities can explore these questions freely. Together, the festival’s partner library services welcome more than 1.6m visitors each year, a scale of trusted public reach that no other cultural institution can match. Each area’s library will be transformed into a vibrant hub for the duration of the festival, reinventing the library as a space where books, art and human experience converge to make conversations about mortality feel natural and community-owned. The centrepiece of the festival is Immortelles, a spectacular, new public artwork from Moving Parts Arts, a Newcastle-based arts organisation, who will run community workshops at each location, inviting residents to contribute their own icons, treasures and symbols to the final installations, leaving a lasting legacy in each library.
Martin Solder, Chair of Vision Trustees, said: “We are incredibly proud that Vision Redbridge is part of bringing Afterlives to a national audience… We look forward to welcoming residents in June for what promises to be a powerful, thought-provoking and deeply human experience.”
The festival addresses a pressing national need to make talking about death, dying and grief much easier. Key highlights of the Wanstead programme include one-woman show Batman (Naomi’s Death Show), an award-winning interactive show by author and playwright Naomi Westerman, taking audiences on a funny, surprising and deeply human journey through our collective fascination with death, true crime and the power of grieving together. For film lovers, the Dead Good Film Club will be an opportunity to watch a film based on the festival themes and to engage in a lively discussion about the things we don’t always talk about. Expect fascinating conversation and fresh perspectives.
Afterlives Art Festival is free to attend and will take place at Wanstead Library on 4 June and Redbridge Central Library from 5 to 7 June. Visit wnstd.com/afterlives
