Over 1000 visitors enjoy evening of art and performance at Nunhead Cemetery

The first Nunhead Cemetery Late event saw over 1,000 attendees enjoying an evening of art, performance and music devised by the Goldsmiths community in response to the Victorian cemetery.

Students, staff and members of the local community gathered at Nunhead Cemetery – one of London’s Magnificent Seven cemeteries – for an evening packed with a busy programme of artworks and performances, inspired by the cemetery’s history and ecology, bringing the site back to life as dusk began to fall.  

The event was curated with Southwark Council and the Friends of Nunhead Cemetery (FONC) as part of the East Lodge Restoration: From Ruin to Revival, and was made possible by generous funding from the National Lottery Heritage Fund. Refreshments were available from local businesses Pure Cane and Dinner for One Hundred.

Will Cenci, Public Engagement Manager at Goldsmiths, said, “This project not only provided external funding to commission academics and students to showcase their research and creative practice in response to one of London’s most striking green spaces, it also helped forge new collaborative relationships with local partners.” 

Performance and spectacle

IRIE! dance theatre – Britian's leading dance theatre company working in the field of African and Caribbean dance fusion - performed ‘The Breath Between the Stones,’ including a procession along the Avenue, drawing on the location’s history as a place of mourning, but also of hope and resilience.  

Artists Alexa Reid (from the School of Music, English and Theatre) and Natasha Lohan presented ‘holos’ - a living sculpture growing amongst the ruins of the chapel. The piece, which was a community commission, reflected on ideas of decay and regeneration, drawing on the ecology of the chapel ruins, such as moss and lichen.  

In a procession culminating in a performance in the ruined chapel, Plastique Fantastique (led by Professor Simon O'Sullivan) donned reflective masks and, through music, song and spoken word, manifested their future dead selves. Their performance both honoured pre-Christian entities that are depicted in carvings around the cemetery, such as the Green Man and Ouroboros, and also acknowledged the history of the Dissenters Movements which are associated with the site.  

Throughout the evening, the glowing Grief Houses wandered the paths of the cemetery in a procession of puppetry and sound, interacting with those they passed. The Grief Houses, which included a snail shell, caravan and house with skeletal arms, remember all lost things that have not had a funeral – the house you moved out of, the country left behind, the forest built over. This collective haunting was led by Goldsmiths undergraduate theatre students James Meaney and Elsa Swadling-France, with external collaborators Polly Swadling-France and Fox Harrison.  

Young artists from Alchemy - Goldsmiths’ youth mentoring and performance programme for 13-21-year-olds in Lewisham - performed an immersive music and spoken-word performance ‘Other Worlds’ in and around the chapel, channelling the voices of the city’s forgotten, unheard and unseen, drawing on both lived experiences and local histories and myths.  

In a secluded glade, twelve performers in shrouds slowly withered to the ground, only to bloom again, in a performance exploring plants’ cycles of life and death. ‘Wither and Bloom’ was devised by Marie-Gabrielle Rotie from the School of Music, English and Theatre. 

Responding to the cemetery’s ecology  

An immersive audio experience led by Dr Mike Thompson from the School of Design allowed visitors to experience what the world sounds like to one of the cemetery’s trees, with specially-designed 3D-printed tools allowing for the live capture of audio and for participants to listen like a tree. 

‘Uncommon Weevils’ saw artists Louise Ashcroft from the School of Art and Fritha Jenkins roaming the cemetery with a violin and busking amps, singing a list of the different species of birds, insects, plants and fungi that inhabit it, creating a ‘green list’ and a hopeful, local alternative to the ‘red lists’ of endangered species. 

The Urban Nature Observatory asked visitors to join a creative workshop, using collage to map potential locations for DIY environmental sensors for monitoring wildlife in the cemetery. Led by Cindy Strobach from the School of Design and Mike Vanis from Northumbria University, the workshop explored questions around what environmental data we should collect in our neighbourhood, how we can visualise it to share with others, and how we can use it to become more active, ecological citizens. 

Getting involved  

Visitors were invited to don wireless headphones and wander the cemetery while listening to a bespoke, immersive soundscape of live music in 'Between the Ruins,’ led by Dr Marcus Leadley from the School of Music, English and Theatre.  

MA Art and Ecology students offered a spring weaving experience, where participants could add to interactive, loom-like sculptures, weaving plants and flowers to the backdrop of an accompanying soundscape incorporating bird call, nature sounds, instruments and spoken word.  

‘The Wandering Cat’ included a 3D-printed cat which glowed softly when touched by passers-by, a shadow-puppet show, a costumed performer wandering the cemetery and a five-minute virtual reality experience which invited visitors to sit with strangers from other times. It was supported by the School of Creative Management (MA Arts Administration and Cultural Policy).