Dead Good Legacies

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Dead Good Legacies

Arts-based, eco deathwork & death education sisters. Here for the big conversations: death, grief, funerals, ritual. Subscribe to The Mortal Portal on Substack.

We support people to confront & celebrate their mortality through imaginative & creative work. Dead Good was co-founded by sisters Katy Vigurs and Lindsey Vigurs in 2018. Dead Good provides a range of creative and imaginative ‘death positive’ services. ‘Death positive’ means talking openly and compassionately about life, death, dying, grief, and remembrance rituals. Dead Good's services include advance funeral planning, 'Get Mortal' parties, living funerals, memorial events, personal legacy projects, and wider death education (e.g. alternative funerals, eco-funerals, DIY acts of remembrance). Our aim is to support you to participate creatively, emotionally and physically in creating meaningful legacies, rituals and farewells. We will help you to work out how you want to be remembered and what personal legacies you want to leave behind. We work with the living, the dying and the dead; with individuals, families, groups of friends, and organisations. Dead Good is based in Sunderland (UK) and covers the North East England region for face-to-face work. We offer most of our services online too.

14/11/2025

This morning, we ran a lively session with at about the art of reusing heirloom textiles and, my oh my, it was such a positive experience.

We were joined by 70+ equally lively people from all around the world (some who were tuning in 02:30am in their time zone).

The Zoom room of participants shared such wonderful examples of heirloom fabrics and textiles in the chat. Man, we filled up that digital thread with REAL tactile threads.

And then Alke and Lindsey blew our minds by sharing tonnes of inspirational project ideas.

Loads of participants said they'd like to take part in a future QUILTY PLEASURES online maker space with us. If this was you, please comment below or DM us and we'll be in touch.

I'm off to kantha stitch my Dad's birdwatching hat now! It's going to be rad.

Love you bye

13/11/2025

LV will be installing a DEAD GOOD exhibition next week at the 01625 Gallery, which is an outdoor micro art gallery in two listed red K6 telephone boxes outside Macclesfield Town Hall.

What a flipping ace arts space!

LV will be turning the phone box galleries into physical 'Mortal Portals', and the exhibition will run from November 2025 to February 2026. We chose this time frame as we wanted to include National Grief Awareness Week in the first week of December.

We'll give some peeps and hints of the exhibition once the install week is over. Next week will be all kinds of mayhem.

We'll also soon share the dates that LV will be at the 01625 Gallery in person with a more immersive community offer!

Through quirky and curious art installations, the gallery aims to support and promote local artists. Funded by Macclesfield Town Council, this micro gallery is right on the high street, ready for people to experience whenever they're visiting the town centre.

Big, big thanks to for all the excellent help and exhibition guidance thus far.

More on Mortal Portals at 01625 soon.

Love you bye

12/11/2025

Hooray! We've been picked as one of the 31 Challenge Ambassadors by for 2026!

This is significant to us because 2026 will mark the very last January Challenge from 😭

The January Challenge is a programme of 31 daily creative prompts for you to do by yourself or with your friends, family, colleagues, networks and communities.

AND IT'S FREE TO TAKE PART, PALS.

We've provided the creative prompt for DAY 24.

"A FUNERAL FOR..."

Think of something you have been meaning to let go of.
It might be a chapter in your life, a piece of clothing or an old banana in the fruit bowl...

Hold a funeral for it.

Celebrate or mark the time you had together.

If it’s a feeling or event in your life, you might write your thoughts down and speak them aloud - letting it go into the wind. If it’s an object, you might pass it forward, re-purpose it, or simply take the time to say thank you, and goodbye.

What will you hold a funeral for this January?

This year, the theme of the 31 prompts is ‘Courageous Change’ with each one designed to help us get a new perspective, build our courage, and help us
collaborate so that we can be more prepared for this wildly unpredictable world.

To get involved, go to website via their bio and sign yourself up for the challenge.

Last year 360,000 people took part. Let's make the last one the biggest and best.

There’s no better time to make change than now, so sign up, take part, and we'll see you there!

Love you bye

11/11/2025

At today's creative grief cafe in Sunderland, we talked as we scoured magazines for words and images that called to us. That connected us to our grief.

Ripping, cutting, arranging, rearranging, and sticking kept our hands and eyes busy while we listened to one anothers' stories and experiences.

We shared openly and deeply.

Giving grief some elbow room in our lives is important.

And creating space for sharing grief in community is important too.

None of us knew what we wanted to make when we sat down together. And yet out it flowed.

How would you like to tend to your grief?

Thank you to for co-hosting today's grief café so generously. They are great collaborators!

Love you bye

10/11/2025

This is Pommy. Real name, John (long story).

2005 - 2023

Pommy liked to sit in an empty bath or the bathroom sink.

He used to shred any paper that got left out. We lost many a postcard, phone bill, and children's drawing to the shredding. I used to leave out decoy paper to try to keep our notebooks and homework safe.

He had a dog flap instead of a cat flap. Big boy.

Once, he brought a live newt into the house, which I (KV) had to retrieve and return to the wild.

Pommy was affectionate and personable and a looming, friendly presence.

The grief you feel when one of your pets dies is real and valid.

The cats before Pommy were:
Kitty
Jess
Dot
Misty
Steve (Pommy's brother)

I regularly dream about them in mundane but comforting ways.

Which of your pets are you missing? What do you miss most about them? Tell us something about them! Share them with us.

Love you bye

09/11/2025

When your friend (and DEAD GOOD director) visits from Stoke and makes you do a November North Sea dip before her train home.

What a sunrise!

Love you bye

08/11/2025

Have you got your ticket for next weekend?

It's a 4-day international online festival about death and grief.

It pretty much runs 24 hours a day across the 4 days so as to incorporate all timezones.

SUCH A RAMMED SCHEDULE FULL OF FANTASTIC & FASCINATING SESSIONS.

Literally something for every human being out there.

We're hosting a session at 10:30am GMT on Friday that's all about creative approaches to heirloom fabrics and hand-me-down textiles.

Big thanks in advance to who will be facilitating our session.

Tickets only cost £20 FOR THE WHOLE FESTIVAL!

And if that is unaffordable you can have a free ticket.

There is also a pay what you want option.

IT'S ABSOLUTELY INSANE VALUE FOR MONEY.

You can get your festival ticket today through 's bio.

Love You Bye

07/11/2025

DEAD GOOD and are hosting a free creative grief cafe in Sunderland city centre next week.

Drop in any time during the 2-hour slot. Stay as long as you want. Everyone is welcome. Participation includes a free hot drink from .uk cafe.

There'll be a creative activity on offer to help us express our grief and loss. And to give us something to do with our hands as we talk and listen to each other.

All types of grief are welcome here.

If you are grieving something or someone, this space is for you.

Please share with your grieving people.

Tuesday 11th November
10:00-12:00
Hills Art Centre, SR1 3HT

See you there.

Love you bye

Track by the hauntingly magical artist of 💚

06/11/2025

Do you want to know what we've planned for our own funerals?

At the end of every episode of the Puny Mortal Podcast, we share some of our own funeral wishes. You can expect hippy, DIY, nature-based vibes (with a bit of 90s grunge mixed in for good measure).

We end each episode in this way as a friendly prod to get you thinking about your funeral wishes.

We'll tell you ours and all that, pals.

There are six episodes of the Puny Mortal Podcast:

Episode 1: Our first experiences of death (this tells you everything you need to know about our 1980s childhood).

Episode 2: Neurodivergence & death (reflections on the heady mix between neurodivergence, emotions, communication, death and grief).

Episode 3: The impact of fictional deaths (prepare for the biggest spoilers in the world).

Episode 4: How the horror genre shaped our relationship with mortality and death (LV is a horror nerd - listen out for her top 5 horror films).

Episode 5: A conversation on the desire to rewild deathcare through natural burial and organic decay (cue some shade throwing on the massive carbon footprint of flame cremation).

Episode 6: A contemplation on death futures (including an argument between KV & LV about Black Mirror's San Junipero episode).

You can listen through our Substack or other streaming platforms. Links are in our bio.

A photo of festival KV at the end as algo tax.

Love you bye

PS Beautiful track by of - ethereal splendour!

05/11/2025

We've been working on something behind the scenes all year.

It's nearly time to show you.

Watch this space for some tasty titbits and sneaky peeks.

What can it be? What can it be?

All will be revealed, pals.

Love you bye

03/11/2025

Funeral poverty is horribly real.

One of DEAD GOOD's three social objectives is to help tackle funeral poverty.

So we're very keen to support a new campaign being launched today by and Down To Earth, which aims to fix the broken system of government support with funeral costs for the poorest families in England and Wales. This is known as the Funeral Expenses Payment.

A government Funeral Expenses Payment can help pay for some of the costs of the following:

- burial fees for a particular plot
- cremation fees, including the cost of the doctor’s certificate
- travel to arrange or go to the funeral
- the cost of moving the dead person's body within the UK, if being moved more than 50 miles
- death certificates or other documents
- plus up to £1,000 for any other funeral expenses, such as funeral director’s fees, flowers or the coffin.

The payment will not usually cover all of the costs of the funeral.

The payment amount depends on your circumstances. This includes any other money that’s available to cover the costs, for example, from an insurance policy or the deceased person’s estate.

The eligibility criteria for the national Funeral Expenses Payment (FEP) are narrow and don’t reflect real life. Down To Earth's new campaign, 'Grief is Hard Enough: Fix the FEP', calls on central government to align the criteria with Scotland's system, where 40% more people can access vital financial support with funeral costs.

Here's how you can help! Please email your MP (full details and a template are on Down To Earth's campaign page). And do share this campaign with friends, family, your networks, and colleagues. Hit the re-post button. Or share in your stories.

The Funeral Expenses Payment is aimed at people in England and Wales who are in receipt of a 'qualifying benefit' (any income-related benefit like Universal Credit). However, the eligibility rules are very narrow, leaving thousands of people who are receiving a qualifying benefit struggling with funeral costs.

Let's pull together to fix the current FEP system in England and Wales.

Love You Bye

02/11/2025

My goodness, it's so busy at Leek's first Day of the Dead festival in Staffordshire! Absolutely terrific.

LV gave a public talk to this packed space at the top of the day. She's there until 6 pm, manning the DEAD GOOD stall and fielding lots of community questions.

The kids love hi-fiving our Stevie, the 5ft plushy skeleton.

Nearly sold out of worm stickers too - the Staffordshire Knot worm is very popular in Leek! Local logo, innit.

Let's all do death & grief differently all year round, pals.

And massive well done, - what a magnificent event!

Love you bye.

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Sunderland

Website

http://www.deadgood.org/, https://linktr.ee/deadgoodlegacies

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