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 ad

vance 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.

23/07/2025

This year, we've been supported by a brilliant collection of women & non-binary peers (most of whom are neurodivergent like us) to help us carefully and strategically develop our work as DEAD GOOD and to also make sure we take care of ourselves as KV & LV.

We've deliberately chosen to invest in formal and continuous coaching and supervision relationships with outside folk because setting up and running a micro & creative social enterprise that generates social value AND ALSO pays our wages is not for the faint-hearted.

Operationally, DEAD GOOD is just two people. Two sisters.

But behind the scenes, we prioritise getting the most excellent people around us to support us with motivation, perseverance, organisation, strategic planning, knowledge building, and seeing things from different perspectives.

We just wouldn't be dead good without the support of these coaches and supervisors. Their support is golden.

We love them. And we love you bye.

I.D. LV is a white woman in her 40s. She is outside at .barn wearing a bright yellow t-shirt with the wording DEAD GOOD in black on the front of the tee. She is holding the handset of a rotary dial telephone (our travelling wind phone) to her ear. The text over the image says: YOU ARE DEAD GOOD. The importance of support.

22/07/2025

Remember when you used to cover every inch of your childhood bedroom walls in pull-out posters of pop stars from Look-In and Smash Hits? Before later upgrading as teenagers to massive glossy posters of Pearl Jam, Nirvana and Faith No More bought from Fantasy World or HMV? Surely, this wasn't just us?

Well, we're bringing poster vibes back, pals.

LV designed a limited collection of 20 x 'A-Z Creative Approaches to Grief' posters.

I mean, I'm (KV) calling them posters. LV calls them A3 gicleé prints. Or more specifically, fine art quality, full colour, A3 prints on archival paper. Signed and editioned by LV.

Oooooooooooooh. Tis a vibrant thing of valuable beauty.

This 'poster' design is an illustrated A-Z of creative approaches to grief. Grief is often best served through 'acts of service' and by being busy. We present you with 26 low-cost or free ways to process your grief, whether you are grieving a person, place, pet or something else. Lots of things can cause grief and you are not limited to traditional ways of grieving.

Perfect for you or one of your people. A piece of original art for your adult home. Mine is framed and in my downstairs toilet. Always a talking point with visitors.

Order your very own edition here:

https://www.deadgood.org/shop/p/92abwl9fd62olsjb7dx0oynzyk6k7f

We love you. Bye.

21/07/2025

Blimey, we're finalists for the 'Yearly Achievement Award' at the National Good Funeral Awards 2025.

GET OUT THE NON-ALCOHOLIC BUBBLY, PALS.

My oh my, it's a VERY strong category.

The other finalists in the category are our wonderful and inspirational deathy peers and .

All of us are working innovatively and creatively to help people have the choice and support to do death differently.

Whilst the national recognition is really appreciated, we also want to acknowledge all the other public and community death/funeral educators who are doing fantastic things to develop deathcare and deathwork in the UK. We are a massively growing & merry mortality band!

We love being part of this community

Collaboration over competition always.

And thank you for nominating us for this category. Your support means A LOT.

Love you bye

I.D. KV is a white woman in her 40s with shoulder length orange hair and a massive orange fringe. She's wearing an orange coat, you know, for maximum ORANGE. She's holding a bottle of zero-alcohol sparkling wine in each hand and has an expression of surprise on her stupid face. KV wrote this description 😀

20/07/2025

This is the first natural burial site we ever visited.

It was 2018.

Three generations of Vigurses explored this woodland burial ground.

This is Granville's Wood, which is owned by The Woodland Burial Company. It's near Chesterfield in the UK.

We'd never heard of natural burial before, so this visit blew our minds. The sounds, scents and sights were exquisite.

This woodland burial ground lets you buy a 'family nook' within the wood. We loved the language they were using. It felt like a different way to do death. It was welcoming and comforting and nature-based.

We didn't know back then that natural burial would become such a core part of our life and work.

This visit shifted something inside us.

🌱

Love you bye

19/07/2025

Last weekend, one of the participants in the GET MORTAL workshop at said that he wished me and LV had a TV commercial to rival that of a big direct cremation company. At first I thought he was joking and laughed out loud. But he said "I'm serious, I want more people to hear what you're talking about and to hear how you talk about death and funerals."

Then I remembered that LV actually did make a DEAD GOOD commercial last year (on a bit of a whim) after an invitation from .radio.

Such a deathy ear worm was born. And LV's vocals are absolute class.

We will never have a budget for TV advertisements. But we love the idea of writing deathy pop jingles.

Doing death differently through song.

What tune should we write our next jingle to?

LOVE YOU BYE

18/07/2025

Seven months after our dad died in 2022, LV was commissioned by to take on a 1 month long Blank Space artist residency in Stoke town centre.

Stoke-on-Trent is where we were born and where Dad died.

LV came across the motto IT’S OKAY TO DECAY in the work of AJ Hawkins in 2021 (please check out AJ’s art and buy their death-rad merch). We started using the motto as a family, especially when Dad chose a woodland burial over cremation when planning his funeral.

LV reached out to AJ to tell them about the BLANK SPACE brief and to ask if they’d mind if LV used the motto in the public art installation should the commission be approved. AJ replied with positivity and grace and said they felt no ownership over the phrase (thank you AJ, although it remains important to us that we acknowledge the antecedents of this work).

So Lindsey applied for the commission under the title IT’S OKAY TO DECAY and B Arts said yes. Below is a section of her application:

"My lovely dad died in February 2022 as I was planning this installation. He was buried in woodland in a hand woven willow coffin. My whole family has a gentle yet practical approach to dying and I want to share with others that it is possible to LIVE FULLY by embracing death as an integral part of the human experience."

LV returned to the art installation each week and enacted a public process of decay and change upon the piece. She wanted to visually communicate that processes of rot and decay can be wonderfully alluring and life-giving, and that transition can be welcomed (even in death and decomposition). The video shows some of the changes LV made to the piece over four weeks.

For us, it’s a significant piece of personal history that marks the beginning of our DEAD GOOD creative community deathwork and eco-funerals awareness raising and campaigns.

IT'S OKAY TO DECAY, pals. Truly.

Love you bye

17/07/2025

KV here. Do you love growing and gardening?

It's brought me real joy this year.

And it all started because my aunt sent me six shrivelled pea seeds that came from seeds my dad had originally given her.

Best gift ever.

Love you bye

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Hello there. We're Katy (KV) and Lindsey (LV), your arts-based, eco death education sisters. Here for the big conversations: death, grief, funerals, ritual. We support people to confront & celebrate their mortality through imaginative & creative work. Subscribe to The Mortal Portal on Substack. Listen to our Puny Mortal Podcast. Check out our resources and merch in the webshop. Commission us to run a mortality-inspired workshop or to help you design a funeral, living funeral or commemorative project. We're not for everyone, but we are just right for you 💚

16/07/2025

We host 'get mortal' workshops to help you create and write down a set of imaginative funeral wishes.

You can book us to run them in person in the North East and also in Cheshire/Staffordshire (UK).

How does it work?

You choose the venue and up to 10 people you know.

And we'll come over to run the 2.5 hour workshop and we'll provide all the resources and props.

We've run get mortal workshops in holiday cottages, offices, private dining rooms, in community centres, meadows, under gazebos, and around farmhouse kitchen tables.

We did this with our dad before he died and we then used his wishes to design and carry out his funeral.

We ran a get mortal workshop as part of a True Crime event last weekend and we've been booked by to run a public one in Stockton in October.

But you can also book us to run a private event for you & your friends.

Let's get this life & death admin sorted.

We'll help you turn sadmin into gladmin!

Drop us a message on socials or email us at hello@deadgood.org

Love you - share your wishes before you die - bye

Photography by on one of our modern funeral photoshoots at .barn

I.D. there are 10 images. Images 1-4, 6-7 & 10 show what a 'get mortal' funeral wishes workshop looks like. An outdoor version of the workshop is depicted with people sitting around a picnic table covered in a bright, striped tablecloth. The workshop participants are sharing a picnic whilst talking about funeral choices and writing down ideas for their own funerals. Images 5, 8 & 9 show real examples of handwritten funeral wishes. Image 5 shows KV's wishes for how she'd like her dead body cared for. Images 8-9 show excerpts from our dad's funeral wishes.

15/07/2025

Content warning: hospital treatment, acute illness, confronting mortality

It's been 10 months since I (LV) was in hospital with life-threatening horribleness.

The main point of this post is to encourage more of you (all of you) to use our 'MY FAREWELL' planning zine to think about, and crucially WRITE DOWN, what you would like to happen when you die. I had, sensibly, already done this before I was randomly struck down. I had filled in one of our packs and lodged it in my death file. And I already had a will (but not updated it for 12 months).

I share the pictures and text-notes of my time in hospital to show how life can turn on a dime, for some personal processing and vulnerability and to hopefully prompt you to buy a pack from our webshop and attend to your life and death admin.

https://www.deadgood.org/shop/p/get-mortal-individual-planning-pack

I still have more paperwork to complete, and I'll share my progress as I go for my own accountability and to hopefully lead by example.

But start here. Start today. Buy a pack to make a commitment to yourself and your best people. Baby steps are totally cool.

AND HEY: get in touch if you want to be supported through this process. That is something we can also lovingly offer.

I feel lucky to be alive. Lucky for lots of reasons.

Love you. Bye.

Image description in progress (when I have the spoons 🥄 )

14/07/2025

The answer is a big YES.

Would you bring your children and young people (or someone else's) to a DEAD GOOD activity or workshop? Do you have any worries about involving children in mortality-based activities? We'd love to know how you feel about these things.

We think children and young people are dead good.

And we've worked with hundreds over the last two years.

We believe death literacy is for everyone.

Our creative community workshops & public conversations about death and dying are perfect for young people and families with small children.

Children and young people can be incredibly straightforward about death and dying, especially when spaces are created where they can gently explore concepts, ask questions, and share their experience.

When they & their families spend time with us, they find themselves getting involved with hands-on activities like painting cardboard coffins, designing natural burial grounds through play, shrouding action figures for a mock funeral, making DIY clay memorials, collaging mini gravestones, and learning about natural lifecycles and the role of decay.

And that's just for starters...

Love you bye

I.D. The opening image is of a grey concrete floor with KV's pink secondhand trainers & multicoloured pre-loved trousers in view. The photograph is overlaid with the words 'ARE DEAD GOOD WORKSHOPS APPROPRIATE FOR CHILDREN AND YOUNG PEOPLE?' The next 17 photographs document a wide range of children and young people taking part in our community death education activities and workshops. With cameos by

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Sunderland

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

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