Dead Good Legacies

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.

Two tickets left for December's online 'Creative Approaches to Grief' workshop.Who else wants to join this small group s...
21/11/2025

Two tickets left for December's online 'Creative Approaches to Grief' workshop.

Who else wants to join this small group session?

Please do share with your people and networks. We'll gladly accept as many reposts, story shares and message shares as you can throw at us.

I've got to say I'm really looking forward to spending time with people during National Grief Awareness Week!

Also, FYI, in addition to the workshop, each participant will receive a digital download of our quirky A3 poster, which illustrates an A-Z of example creative approaches to grief. Perfect for printing out and putting up on your wall / a friend's wall / a workplace wall / a waiting room wall / a public toilet door.

Worth sticking up everywhere, in fact.

Book your place via the events link in our Linktr.ee (see bio), unless Eventbrite is being weird like it was yesterday, then DM us to find out an alternative way to book. Man alive the tech bros love to keep me on my toes!

Love you byeeeeeeer

Last night, we jointly won an award with at the awards in London.What a surprise and a thrill!'Grooviest End of Life O...
21/11/2025

Last night, we jointly won an award with at the awards in London.

What a surprise and a thrill!

'Grooviest End of Life Organisation'

It was actually a huge honour to simply be short-listed as finalists with a group of peers we love and respect: & Integrity Funeral Care.

We've since found out that we were nominated by the glorious who also run . The Kates are a combined powerhouse when it comes to funeral education and their approach continues to enthuse and inspire us DEAD GOOD SISTERS.

Biggest thanks of all to our mum and dad who have always loved and supported us, even when we make big impulsive decisions!

Thanks to Rose Rouse for the excellent comms in the run up to the awards.

And thanks to you for being with us on this journey!

Groovy 💚💀

Love you bye

Right, pals, you know we LOVE creative community conversations about death and grief?Well... Join KV for a relaxed 2-hou...
20/11/2025

Right, pals, you know we LOVE creative community conversations about death and grief?

Well...

Join KV for a relaxed 2-hour online workshop where we'll explore creative approaches to grief and loss as a small group.

Tickets are available here: https://linktr.ee/deadgoodlegacies

10 places available to keep the group small and friendly.

This is one of our events to mark National Grief Awareness Week in the first week of December.

Join us.

Tell your friends.

Quick, pass it on.

Tuesday 2nd December 2025
7-9pm GMT
Online interactive workshop

Love You Bye

DEAD GOOD is part of the Grieving Divergently research team, which is being led by at the Open University.This project ...
19/11/2025

DEAD GOOD is part of the Grieving Divergently research team, which is being led by at the Open University.

This project is exploring how we can better understand and support bereaved neurodivergent children and young people. The project received a Research Grant Development Award from the Foundation for the Sociology of Health and Illness earlier this year, with a view to developing a much larger project bid to be submitted to the Economic and Social Research Council next year.

Four members of the team, Jon, Poppy, Matt and me (KV), met yesterday to scope out the workshop days that we'll be hosting in Sunderland in February. Poppy's ferret joined the meeting too!

I'll have more to share about this project and the Sunderland workshop days at the beginning of January.

If you'd like to hear more about the project, drop a comment underneath, and I'll make sure I keep you in the loop.

LYB

Zoinks! We've just received $500 from the international social experiment Drop Dead Generous.LV submitted an idea to cre...
18/11/2025

Zoinks! We've just received $500 from the international social experiment Drop Dead Generous.

LV submitted an idea to create an ethereal “death puppet” to help people talk about death and grief.

The idea has been published today on Drop Dead Generous's Substack:

https://open.substack.com/pub/dropdeadgenerous/p/death-puppets-librarian-breakfasts?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=36bdmv

"Knowing how scary and overwhelming conversations about death can be - especially for young people - DEAD GOOD want to build a gentle, mysterious creature (possibly a moth) that families can meet, interact with and remember. With $500, Lindsey will collaborate with a coffin-weaver to craft its head while she designs its body and costume. A weird, wonderful puppet offering comfort, curiosity and a new way to approach loss."

For context, are currently investing $500,000 in 1000 ideas.

Our death puppet is idea 231.

If you've got a rad idea for doing good, we really recommend submitting it to Drop Dead Generous. The process is quick and painless. And since receiving the grant, we've been given tonnes of support and inspo from the organisation too.

Now to start weaving the skull of a giant moth. Just a regular day at DEAD GOOD HQ.

Watch this space, pals.

AND BIG THANK YOU TO TOM & TEAM FOR THE GRANT.

Love you bye

We're starting to think about developing creative death literacy projects that actively include all children in learning...
17/11/2025

We're starting to think about developing creative death literacy projects that actively include all children in learning about non-religious rites of passage, especially ceremony and ritual around death and grief.

We're particularly drawn to working alongside children to explore what expansive funeral education could look like for families. What happens if you create spaces for children to explore and reimagine conventional funeral practices? What happens when children start designing funerals?

Over to you now! Who should we be talking with about this? Who's already doing amazing work in this area? Let us know in the comments, pals. We're keen to build an informal network around this strand of work & thought.

Love you bye

Book: Maia and What Matters (2013) Tine Mortier & Kaatje Vermeire (translated by David Colmer), Book Island.

I (KV) collected owl ornaments as a 1980s child.Most of my school friends were collecting 'cooler' things like novelty s...
16/11/2025

I (KV) collected owl ornaments as a 1980s child.

Most of my school friends were collecting 'cooler' things like novelty scented erasers or garbage pail kids cards. But I stuck to owls.

I got my first Brownie badge - the collector's badge - for my collection of hooty trinkets.

I (KV) was once even captured on a camcorder in 1988 as an eleven year old saying solemnly and gruffly - and in the strongest Wolverhampton accent ever - "Lindsey, my owl collection." I was trying to get LV to draw attention to my collection on tape because I was too self-conscious to do it myself.

[Nearly 40 years later, this phrase is regularly repeated in our family. It's become a kind of shorthand for 'you need to see at this' or 'don't overlook that.' We don't have Wolverhampton accents anymore, but we gamely resurrect said accent for this saying]

Anyway, in the mid-90s, in a fit of ill-judged teenage identity shifting, I sold my whole owl collection at a carboot sale to one teenage boy.

I regret this.

I can still picture every owl ornament in the collection.

If I hadn't got rid of them, the wooden ones could ultimately have been buried with me. And the others could have been arranged around my shroud at the funeral in a weird vigil tableaux.

Luckily, Mum and Dad bought their own iconic owl pieces over the years, so Operation Owl Vigil may still be possible in some form or other when I die.

Must add this to my set of funeral wishes!

Do you have a recurring motif in your life? Do tell. Do.

Love you bye

P.S. kudos to our dad for leaving us a handwritten 'beware' note in a hollow ceramic owl from beyond his woodland grave. DO NOT DRINK FROM THIS (toxic) OWL.

Something is on its way.This year, LV has been very busy behind the scenes, dreaming, designing, creating and illustrati...
15/11/2025

Something is on its way.

This year, LV has been very busy behind the scenes, dreaming, designing, creating and illustrating whilst also recovering from emergency surgery and managing the symptoms of chronic illness.

Next year will be a sort of rebirth of something that's been dormant for over a decade.

It's coming. It's coming.

It's going to be dead good.

More soon, pals.

Love you bye

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

LV will be installing a DEAD GOOD exhibition next week at the 01625 Gallery, which is an outdoor micro art gallery in tw...
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

Hooray! We've been picked as one of the 31 Challenge Ambassadors by for 2026!This is significant to us because 2026 wil...
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

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

Address

Sunderland

Website

https://linktr.ee/deadgoodlegacies

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Dead Good Legacies posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Shortcuts

Share

Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on LinkedIn
Share on Pinterest Share on Reddit Share via Email
Share on WhatsApp Share on Instagram Share on Telegram