A Weekend for the Living...

“…give up the notion that death is catastrophe, or detestable, or even strange.” Lewis Thomas

The Bournemouth Joy of Death Festival is a light-hearted celebration of the Grim Reaper.

We want you to get to know him a little better, and see that he’s not so bad after all.

We also want to take the funeral industry out of the closet.

Death is something we all have in common, and spending a weekend talking about it is a great way to make new friends and forget life’s bothersome trivialities.

This year we’ll be hosting the first Good Funeral Guide Awards and listening to expert speakers explain their work in the funeral trade.

You need to buy a ticket and come along if you’re:

1) A progressive member of the funeral business, eager to tell people about your product or service.

2) At ease with you’re mortality and you want to find out more about how it works. Where else can you hear an embalmer, a soul midwife and a lady who collected her mother from the mortuary and buried her herself?

3) Someone with a sense of humour. We love the anarchic English spirit you get from reading Jessica Mitford, Evelyn Waugh or the Daily Telegraph Obituaries column and we want to spread more of it around.

Come down to Bournemouth and spend a quirky weekend with others who are very much alive and who understand that the serene contemplation of death is the best way to enjoy a contented life.

You’ll get to do tours of local cemeteries, you can pick a coffin, you might even get a ride in a hearse.

Bournemouth is not the ‘undiscover’d country from whose bourne/No traveller returns’. In fact, we’ll be happy for you to go home on Sunday evening refreshed with a heightened sensitivity to the promises of life.

You’ll also be able to enjoy the beach, the beautiful gardens and the hedonistic nightlife.

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Nathaniel Sr: You hang onto your pain like it means something, like it's worth something. Well, let me tell 'ya, it's not worth shit. Let it go. Infinite possibilities, and all he can do is whine.

David: Well, what am I supposed to do?

Nathaniel Sr: What do you think? You can do anything, you lucky bastard, you're alive! What's a little pain compared to that?

David: It can't be that simple.

Nathaniel Sr: [putting his arm around David and pulling him closer] What if it is?