by Liz Rothschild
Kicking
the
Bucket
“You can’t call it that!” a friend said
to me in the early days of planning
my festival of Living and Dying in
Oxford on autumn 2012. But I persisted (slightly nervously at first)
and a huge number of people commented on how approachable the
name made it all feel.
I think it takes a bit of chutzpah to run these kinds
of things but it is so worth it. The feedback was
overwhelmingly positive, reflecting people’s relief at finding a place where they could talk about
the subject, not feel so isolated with their particular concerns, where death could become part
of their lives not something fearful and hidden
away. “I have lived in Oxford for 20 years and this
has been the best two weeks of my life” said one
festivalgoer.
So a Festival of Living and Dying to
encourage people to broach the subject.
Our festival used a wide range of different
approaches and venues to catch lots of different people. I have a background in the theatre
and community arts and I know the effectiveness of the arts in helping us come to term with
difficult experiences and feelings and in allowing us to see the world from a different angle.
Experiencing and imagining other ways of
doing things can enable us to begin to live
them for ourselves. So the arts were a crucial
part of what we did but by no means the only
approach. We worked through the primary and
secondary schools, Blackwells bookshop, the
Pitts Rivers museum, the Oxford Union, an independent cinema, a meditation centre, the
Pegasus
Theatre and the Old Fire Station
gallery and performance space.