About this Event
As dusk falls on Nunhead Cemetery, masked performers emerge to honour the future dead, live music drifts between the headstones, and puppets process its paths. Listen like a tree, weave the cemetery’s spring flowers, witness the emergence of a living sculpture from a ruined chapel, and hear the voices of London’s past, returning to confront us with histories buried beneath our soil.
Curated with Southwark Council, and the Friends of Nunhead Cemetery, discover works brought to life through creative collaboration and local engagement, inspired by the cemetery’s history, landscape, and ecology.
IRIE! dance theatre will present a new site responsive diverse dance performance with accompanying live drumming, drawing on African and Caribbean diasporic traditions.
With pizza by Dinner for One Hundred and drinks by Pure Cane. Suitable for all ages - Families welcome.
Provisional programme
Whispers Between Ruins | Experience the Cemetery through an immersive headphone soundscape of site-responsive live music, field recordings and pre-recorded compositions by Goldsmiths students. Watch live acts or wander the cemetery using wireless headphones, experiencing its gothic splendour and spring ecology in new ways. Led by Dr Marcus Leadley (Goldsmiths’ School of Music, English and Theatre).
Plastique Fantastique Summon Future-Dead-Selves | A masked mumming performance of music, song and spoken word will manifest Plastique Fantastique’s future-dead selves. Their ritual honours pre-Christian entities depicted in the cemetery’s stone carvings representing cycles of rebirth (Green Man, Ouroboros) and also the Dissenters Movements associated with the cemetery (which include the Diggers, Levellers, Quakers and Ranters), before channelling communiques from their future-dead selves on renewal and, dissent.
Holos | Holos unfolds as a durational living sculpture, growing from the ruined Anglican Chapel, created in collaboration with children from Ivydale Primary School. Artists Alexa Reid (Goldsmiths’ School of Music, English and Theatre) and Natasha Lohan explore the possibilities of ‘becoming porous’, responding to cycles of decay and regeneration, and asking, ‘how to lichen?’
Listening Like a Tree | Have you ever wondered what the world sounds like to a tree? What does it hear? What does it sense? In this immersive audio experience, visitors are invited to explore live-captured sounds from the tree’s under and overstory using a range of 3D-printed tools and specially adapted microphones. Listening Like a Tree is an outcome of the AHRC-funded ‘Reperceiving Communities: Prototyping the More-Than-Human Community Toolkit’ project. Led by Mike Thompson (Goldsmiths’ School of Design).
Spring Weaving |A series of interactive, loom-like sculptures invite visitors to weave plants and flowers that grow in the cemetery into a living tapestry, part natural wool, part standing garden. An accompanying soundscape of bird call and nature sounds incorporating instruments and spoken word relevant to the history of the cemetery and its ecology will be threaded through the work. By the students of the MA Art and Ecology (Goldsmiths’ School of Art).
Grief Houses | A procession of glowing houses with arms, legs and wings wander the cemetery. These ‘Grief Houses’ remember all lost things that never had a funeral: the house you moved out of, the country left behind, the library closed, the forest built over. Join the Grief Houses’ procession of puppetry and sound - a space where all things mourned can be remembered. Walk, whistle, sing and sway with us - join our collective haunting. By Goldsmiths students James Meaney and Elsa Swadling-France (BA Drama), and external collaborators Polly Swadling-France and Fox Harrison.
Uncommon Weevils | Artists Louise Ashcroft (Goldsmiths’ School of Art) and Fritha Jenkins roam Nunhead Cemetery with violin and busking amps, playing the environment as a musical and lyrical score. Ashcroft warbles a list of birds, insects, plants and fungus species that live there, while Jenkins remixes and regurgitates the words like a beetle breaking down bark. This lyrical listing ritual brings together different species surveys for the first time in one 'green list' offering a hopeful local alternative to the global endangered 'red lists' that warn of impending extinction.
Other Worlds | A group of local young artists from the Goldsmiths Alchemy Collective will guide visitors through the cemetery with a site-specific immersive music and spoken word performance, inviting them to tune into the stories buried beneath the soil, and inside themselves. The cemetery will become the unconscious of the city, and the performers will channel the voices and sounds of the forgotten, unseen and unheard, as hauntings, and dreams, drawing on lived experience blended with local history and mythology.
Urban Nature Observatory | Join a creative, interactive workshop where you can use collage to map the potential locations of DIY environmental sensors to monitor wildlife in the cemetery. In this workshop, we will explore what environmental data we should collect in our neighbourhood, how we can visualise it for others, and how we can use it to become more active ecological citizens. Led by Cindy Strobach (Goldsmiths’ School of Design) and Mike Vanis (Northumbria University).
About the project
This activity is part of the Nunhead Cemetery , and is produced in partnership with Southwark Council and Friends of Nunhead Cemetery (FONC). It is made possible by generous funding from the Heritage Fund.
Accessibility
Mobility access: Nunhead Cemetery is a historic outdoor site with mixed terrain. Paths vary from smooth, wide avenues to uneven or sloped ground, and conditions can change with the weather. Some areas may be easier to navigate with motorised mobility aids than with manual wheelchairs. A temporary threshold ramp will be installed at the entrance to the Anglican Chapel ruin to support step‑free access. Assistance dogs are welcome onsite.
Autistic and neurodivergent attendees: Attendees can request an Easy Read “What to Expect” guide ahead of the event, outlining noise levels, lighting conditions, expected crowd flow and performance timings by emailing Events Manager [email protected]. A number of pairs of Ear Defenders will be available on request for adults and children at the Information Desk. Please make sure that they are returned before leaving site to make sure others can use them.
Blind or visually impaired attendees: At the Information Desk, blind or visually impaired visitors can request a tactile map of the site, and large print or Braille version of the event programme. Guide dogs are welcome onsite, and water is available from the hospitality area. A number of the static artworks onsite can be touched, please ask at the Information Desk for further guidance.
d/Deaf or hard of hearing attendees: A written programme will be available onsite for all visitors.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Nunhead Cemetery, Linden Grove, London, United Kingdom
GBP 0.00
