The Guardian ·
‘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.
