‘We thought death could do with a bit of dancing’: welcome to Sondering, the arts festival with its own funeral march

A brush with mortality inspired sisters Sophia and Camilla Minden to create a unique event featuring a funeral procession, wild swimming … and an ‘emoshpit’

Raised in the Lake District on “music, moss and macaroni cheese,” Sophia and Camilla Minden were mindful of death from a very early age. The sisters shared a bed and played in the woods behind their house, frequently bringing home injured and dying birds, frogs and a rat they named Adrian and fed pate and pork pie. “Everything we’d learned about their diet, we learned from Wind in the Willows,” admits Sophia. The creatures rarely survived, but the death of each one was respectfully honoured with a burial in the garden, words spoken, singing and a stone or flower placed on the grave.

What they didn’t expect was that little more than a decade later, they’d be planning Camilla’s own funeral. Diagnosed with late-stage Hodgkin’s lymphoma just after her 20th birthday, she was given an 80% chance of survival, but the other 20% made her investigate her local undertakers (“dated, impersonal and expensive”) and work out what she wanted at her funeral (“spag bol and quite a lot of Michael Jackson”). Navigating “shit wigs” and people’s awkwardness around the subject of dying, she says that she spent a lot of time “bargaining with God”, promising that if she made it through, she’d live life to the full and appreciate every single day.

Now 37 and 40, the sisters have retained that mindset, and after initially exploring setting up their own progressive funeral directors, landed on the idea of creating a death-themed festival that would be as much a celebration of life as an exploration of mortality. So unlike other more conference-style or town-based death events, the Sondering, which debuts this weekend, is unashamedly an arts festival where “fun is allowed”. With live music, theatrical performances and a variety of creative workshops from clowning to shroud-making – plus a splash of guided wild swimming in Rydal Water – the programme has been designed to give people the opportunity to participate and express themselves in ways that might be sorrowful or joyful. “It’s OK to cry and ask for a cup of tea, it’s OK to laugh and dance,” says Sophia.

Located on a working farm with a capacity of just 300 to create an intimate feel, the festival site was chosen for its proximity to particular geographical features. “The Lake District is stunning, magical, healing,” says Sophia. “And we want to share it in a way that brings the landscape and local history alive,” adds Camilla. At sunset on Saturday evening, a cappella group Mouthful will be performing and leading a singing session inside Rydal Cave, making the most of its natural acoustics. And on Sunday, festival-goers will be invited to walk in a slow communal procession with a willow coffin along the old Coffin Route from Rydal to Grasmere. Up until the mid-1800s, this scenic two-and-a-half-mile footpath was how people carried their dead to church to be buried. The coffin – which will be collectively woven on site over the weekend and filled with personal notes of remembrance – will be taken right inside St Oswald’s Church, where there will be a musical performance from kora player John Haycock with Dan Bridgwood-Hill, featuring clarinet, guitar, violin and fiddle. “This is as close to a funeral as we get at the festival,” says Camilla. “We’re not afraid of ritual.”

Aimed equally at those who are simply death-curious and those who are grieving the loss of a loved one, most of the music at the festival has been chosen for its “emotion and energy” and includes folk, reggae, opera, electro-punk and an uplifting DJ set on the Saturday night with an “emoshpit” where emotions good, bad and messy can be released. Other acts have an direct connection to death. The improvised singing of Laurel Morgan is inspired by the Celtic tradition of keening, where wails and wordless sounds are used to lament the dead. And sound artist Jack McNeill will be doing a performance with disassembled clarinets and words from poems written by his wife in response to losing three close family members in the same year. “It’s so easy to feel isolated in grief because it’s so rarely explored other than through a lens of sympathy,” he says. “I’d love people to feel less alone, more connected, and I think music does that better than most things.”

Sophia and Camilla say some have questioned whether a music and arts festival isn’t romanticising or trivialising death. But they say they’re acutely aware the topic is “too big and too hard” for that. “We’re not saying death isn’t scary or painful or tragic,” says Sophia. “We’re asking if facing up to death together in this way can bring us closer to life and each other?” The ultimate aim of the festival is to encourage people to live as richly and compassionately as they possibly can: “Live like they’re going to die.” Even as children with a garden full of wild animal graves, they tell me their house was always full of dancing, laughter, warmth, generosity and love. “We thought death could do with a bit of that,” says Camilla.

The Sondering is at Rydal, Lake District, from 18-21 September