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A Matter of Life and Death Festival 2025 – Details
Via Diane Parkes for BrumYODO
A Matter of Life and Death Festival is taking place across a wide range of venues this year from tattoo studios to libraries, from pubs to undertakers and from country parks to art galleries.
Organised by community interest company BrumYODO, the Birmingham-based ground-breaking festival runs from 5th to 17th May offering author talks, walks, art installations, poetry workshops and discussions across Birmingham and the West Midlands.
BrumYODO, a volunteer-led group based in Birmingham, aims to create safe spaces to think and talk about death and dying. To coincide with the national campaign Dying Matters Awareness Week, BrumYODO has been running A Matter of Life and Death Festival since 2016 and is getting ready for another great year.
Birmingham was accredited as the UK’s first Compassionate City in 2022, recognising it as a place where citizens support each other through difficult times. A member of the Compassionate City coalition, BrumYODO’s festival provides opportunities for people from all communities to join in activities encouraging conversations around death, dying, grief and loss.
Helen Tomblin, one of the BrumYODO board members, says:
This year’s festival hosts some regular events such as a tour of an undertakers, a Birmingham death-related walk, an interfaith walk, an author event and numerous Death Cafes and In Memory events.
Also this year, new venues and contributors have joined the festival including Lucky Rabbit Tattoo Studio and The Lickey Hills Country Park. We’re really pleased to be offering a discussion on memorial tattoos, writing poetry in the Lickey Hills and are also really excited to bring many of our collaborators and creative arts together to culminate the festival in a ‘Pop-Up Death’ event at Birmingham Library.
With Birmingham on the map as a Compassionate City we’re really pleased to see that the momentum is growing to promote healthy and productive conversation about death and dying.”
The programme kicks off with an annual festival favourite, a Death Cafe at The Sun Rising Burial Ground near Warwick, on 6th May. In the evening, Birmingham undertakers A Natural Undertaking open up their new premises in Hall Green for the event Making Uncomfortable Conversations More Comfortable, an informal discussion over cheese and wine led by Evolve and Flourish’s Suzanne McArthur.
On 7th May the festival will explore memorial tattoos at a new venue to the festival, Lucky Rabbit based in Birmingham’s Jewellery Quarter. Back by popular demand, there will be an interfaith walk in Handsworth on 8th May discovering the rituals and practices following death and bereavement within diverse faiths. There will be stops at different places of worship to hear personal stories about what happens after someone dies including services, support and mourning.
That evening people are invited to come together for discussion with the Death over Drinks event at Anjuna Lounge in Stirchley.
In conjunction with The Heath Bookshop, Mary Stevens Hospice and No Barriers Here, the festival welcomes end-of-life care specialist and best-selling author of With the End in Mind, Kathryn Mannix to speak on 9th May in Stourbridge. Demand for this event has been so high a second talk has been scheduled for the same day.
Saturday 10th May sees the festival develop its walking events. In the morning BrumYODO joins forces with Kevin Thomas who will lead a guided tour entitled Five Ways to Die in Birmingham. This walk will explore fascinating hidden stories of Birmingham including the lost Italian Cemetery at the International Convention Centre, the lost Jewish Cemetery at Five Ways, the death of the inventor of the lightbulb, plague pits, and more.
In the afternoon, a new collaborator to the festival, former Birmingham Poet Laureate Giovanni Esposito AKA Spoz, and Holly Winter-Hughes, poet and therapeutic writing practitioner, will be leading a wellbeing walk Up the Lickey Hills. Participants can remember and share stories about a loved one who has died or simply enjoy being outdoors and the experience of being with nature and at peace. Participants will then have the opportunity to spend time writing thoughts and memories and try a bit of poetry.
12th May sees another event new to the festival. People are invited to join Maggie Parsons at Thimblemill Library in Smethwick as she shares information about her Poetree project during COVID, and participants will have the opportunity to read and write poetry for the comfort it can bring.
A popular event each year, on 13th May there is a chance to Meet the Undertakers at A Natural Undertaking in Kings Heath – an opportunity for a tour and to ask those questions about end of life that you have been ‘dying’ to ask.
On 13th May the Northfield Neighbourhood Network Scheme team at Northfield Community Partnership present To Absent Friends at The Navigation Inn in Northfield. This is an informal evening where people can share stories about loved ones who have died over a drink and a meal. Participants can bring an object or a photo, share stories in a safe space and then together raise a toast to ‘absent friends’.
Following its recent renovations, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery is pleased to be returning to the festival with a tour showcasing some of its exhibits on the theme of death and dying on 15th May and then later in the afternoon a Death Cafe in the Edwardian Tea Rooms.
This year for the first time, the festival culminates in a Pop-Up Death event at Library of Birmingham on Saturday 17th May. Exploring life and death through creativity, the event picks up the key festival themes and features some of its collaborators, community participants and arts projects across the West Midlands. With activities including coffin-designing for children and the Jukebox Challenge, it is open to all ages with activities, exhibits and opportunities to imaginatively explore the often taboo subject of death and dying.
Emma Waterford, BrumYODO board member and creative practitioner, says:
We are delighted to close the festival at the Library of Birmingham, right in the heart of Birmingham city centre. With its glass walls making the event visible to passers-by in Centenary Square, our hope is that, through the festival and final pop-up event, we will make this often hidden subject more visible by offering a space for more open conversations about death, dying and living well until we die.”
Emma urges previous A Matter of Life and Death Festival supporters and new visitors to give the events a go.
The festival includes so many very different events we hope we have something for everyone. We have done all we can to ensure as many as possible are free or low cost. Some need to be booked, some are simply drop-in.
Please check our website for all the information – and we hope to see you there.”
For full information including booking details see A Matter of Life and Death Festival 2025 on the BrumYODO events page: brumyodo.org.uk/events and follow the festival on social media BrumYODO
