Dead Good Legacies

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Dead Good Legacies Back our first picture book *The Midnight Moth* on Kickstarter. We need to raise £5k in 30 days. alternative funerals, eco-funerals, DIY acts of remembrance).

It's all or nothing: if we don't hit target, we don't get the funding! Thanks for your support, loads of great rewards on offer, including the book! ❤️ Dead Good was co-founded by sisters Katy Vigurs and Lindsey Vigurs in 2018. Dead Good provides a range of creative and imaginative ‘death positive’ services. ‘Death positive’ means talking openly and compassionately about life, death, dying, grief, and remembrance rituals. Dead Good's services include advance funeral planning, 'Get Mortal' parties, living funerals, memorial events, personal legacy projects, and wider death education (e.g. Our aim is to support you to participate creatively, emotionally and physically in creating meaningful legacies, rituals and farewells. We will help you to work out how you want to be remembered and what personal legacies you want to leave behind. We work with the living, the dying and the dead; with individuals, families, groups of friends, and organisations. Dead Good is based in Sunderland (UK) and covers the North East England region for face-to-face work. We offer most of our services online too.

Growing up in the 1980s, we listened to Storyteller cassette tapes over and over again. Those quirky illustrated magazin...
18/10/2026

Growing up in the 1980s, we listened to Storyteller cassette tapes over and over again. Those quirky illustrated magazines that came with cassette tapes full of strange characters, wacky adventures and voices that transported us into other worlds.

We knew those stories inside out. Still do actually. Knowing what would happen next never stopped us wanting to hear them again. In fact, learning the stories like a script became part of the fun.

Lindsey has now recorded an audio version of The Midnight Moth. And she's gone all in on the storytelling, giving the Midnight Moth its own distinct otherworldly voice!

There's something special about hearing a story told by the person who wrote it and illustrated it. The characters have lived in Lindsey's imagination for more than fifteen years. Now we get to hear what they sound like.

Stories about death don't have to be reserved for moments of grief. They can be part of the stories we grow up with. We hope The Midnight Moth audiobook becomes one of those stories children ask to play again and again.

The audio recording contains the complete story, performed by Lindsey. The additional pages inviting children to imagine and create a funeral ceremony for the Moth are exclusive to the illustrated book available as hardback book and digital download.

Perhaps one day, someone will remember listening to The Midnight Moth as fondly as we remember those old Storyteller cassette tapes.

The audio story of The Midnight Moth is available now via our website.

https://www.deadgood.org/shop/p/the-midnight-moth-audio-book

Loveyoubye

We made a picture book about death and ceremony. Two weeks after we launched it on our website, it's been bought by hund...
17/10/2026

We made a picture book about death and ceremony. Two weeks after we launched it on our website, it's been bought by hundreds of people in 15 countries.

From Macclesfield to South Africa, Finland to New Zealand, Brazil to Canada. And we've also had requests for French and Spanish translations.

It's a bit mind-blowing to think about where this story is travelling. We wonder whether part of the appeal is that The Midnight Moth isn't a traditional children's grief book. It doesn't wait for someone to die before inviting families to explore death together.

We believe children have much to contribute to how we care for our dead, remember them and say goodbye. Their ideas, questions and creativity deserve a place in these conversations. We don't have to wait until we're grieving to begin them.

Familiarity before farewell. It's an idea at the heart of our work at DEAD GOOD, and one we're pleased as punch to see travelling beyond our corner of the world.

We remain grateful to everyone who has bought a copy, shared the story or helped the Midnight Moth find new readers.

If you haven't yet met the Midnight Moth, there are still a few copies of our first-edition hardback available, alongside a digital download edition for readers further afield.

Find both at deadgood.org

Link in bio.

Love you bye

WE NEED YOU. YES YOU, PAL.Has something you’ve seen here found its way into your life/mind/imagination?Perhaps you’ve ha...
16/10/2026

WE NEED YOU. YES YOU, PAL.

Has something you’ve seen here found its way into your life/mind/imagination?

Perhaps you’ve had a conversation about death that you’d been putting off. Discovered a funeral choice you didn’t know existed. Made something in memory of someone. Or sent one of our posts to somebody with the words: “This is what I want.”

We see what gets liked and shared. What we can’t always see is what happens next.

And that’s the bit we’d love your help with.

We’ve made a very short survey to find out whether our work is having any impact.

Could you give us three minutes of your time to tell us?

You don’t need to have bought anything or been to a workshop. If you’ve encountered our work through our social media posts, we’d love to hear from you. Small impacts count. Honest feedback does too.

Your answers will help us understand what’s making a difference, shape what we do next and show potential project commissioners why this work matters.

Fill in our short survey:

https://forms.gle/YC4A8N72mbLxseUJ7

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

THANK YOU.

Loveyoubye

Last night we began a new creative journey with a brilliant group of young adults exploring how we might weave our own e...
15/10/2026

Last night we began a new creative journey with a brilliant group of young adults exploring how we might weave our own experiences of loss and remembrance with the bigger story of nature and wildlife disappearing from Britain's landscapes.

Our starting point? SHRINES.

We explored how different cultures and communities create meaningful spaces and objects to honour, remember and maintain connections with those who have died, and how shrines can hold stories, memories, love and longing.

Then we got curious about what makes a shrine a shrine.

The young people examined examples, annotated them, shared their observations and began imagining possibilities of their own.

Tiny doors that open to reveal hidden things. Matchboxes transformed into miniature worlds. Beads, fabric scraps, seeds, shells and found objects. Secret compartments, symbols, colours and personal treasures.

We talked about how ordinary materials can become extraordinary when we give them meaning. And how we might make things that honour the natural world without causing further harm to it.

Over the coming sessions, these ideas will grow into a collection of handmade shrines, eventually becoming a public exhibition in 2027.

We're interested in what happens when we bring personal and ecological grief into conversation. When we make space for what we've lost ourselves, as well as for the lives, species and relationships disappearing around us.

More on this soon.

LOVEYOUBYE

THE MIDNIGHT MOTH HAS GONE DIGITAL!We've heard from lots of enthusiastic people around the world who'd love a copy of Th...
14/10/2026

THE MIDNIGHT MOTH HAS GONE DIGITAL!

We've heard from lots of enthusiastic people around the world who'd love a copy of The Midnight Moth but have been put off by the wild international shipping costs.

So we've found another way for the Moth to spread its little wings.

Our independently published, 50-page illustrated picture book is now available as an instant DIGITAL DOWNLOAD!

Written and illustrated by Lindsey Vigurs, The Midnight Moth invites children (and their grown-ups) to explore some of life's biggest questions through storytelling, imagination and making.

We strongly believe children deserve more stories in which death is part of life. And more opportunities to imagine what saying goodbye might look like.

Our hardback first edition is still very much available for those who love a physical book. But now The Midnight Moth has another way of reaching you, wherever in the world you happen to be.

The Midnight Moth digital edition is available now. Link in bio.

Love you bye

OUR LIVES LEAVE TRACES IN PLACES. Some places hold entire chapters of our lives. Stories about who we were, who we loved...
12/10/2026

OUR LIVES LEAVE TRACES IN PLACES.

Some places hold entire chapters of our lives. Stories about who we were, who we loved, where we belonged and what mattered to us. And sometimes, those places no longer exist.

Recently, I made a list of seven places that have been particularly important in my life. Every single one was a tree!

The cherry plum in my grandparents' garden. The enormous weeping willow at the bottom of our childhood garden. The cedar tree outside our parents' house. The ancient oak at the top of Trentham Wood.

Four of those seven places are now marked by absence. The trees are gone, but the stories and relationships connected to them remain vivid in my memory.

It got me thinking about how much of our lives is held in ordinary places. And how easily those stories might disappear if we don't find ways to tell them.

At DEAD GOOD, we're interested in legacy as something we can explore, make and share while we're still alive.

One of the ways we do this is through zine-making. Taking a single sheet of paper, folding it into a tiny book and filling it with fragments and traces of our lives.

A hand-drawn map. A remembered smell. A photograph. A conversation. A place that changed us. A story worth sharing.

No artistic talent required. Just a willingness to remember, imagine and make.

Sometimes, it's the smallest, most ordinary details that tell us the most about a life.

Fancy having a go?

Start by writing down seven places or spaces that have been important in your life. They might be places you still visit, places you can never return to, or places that have changed beyond recognition.

Think about the people, relationships and stories connected to each one.

What would you want someone else to know about them?

COME AND MAKE WITH US.

Our next online Creative Approaches to Grief & Legacy workshop takes place on Thursday 12 November, and we have just SIX PLACES LEFT!

We'll be exploring memory, place, grief and personal legacy through creative zine-making.

It's a playful and hands-on opportunity to make something meaningful.

Booking via the link in our bio.

LOVE YOU BYE

What if children didn't have to encounter death and funerals for the first time when someone or something they know and ...
11/10/2026

What if children didn't have to encounter death and funerals for the first time when someone or something they know and love dies?

What if they could explore these things beforehand? Through stories, imagination, play and making?

We'd love to know: have you ever seen a child bring their own ideas to a funeral, memorial or goodbye ceremony?

We believe children have a place in deathcare, as people with their own questions, ideas, feelings and ways of making meaning.

That's one of the reasons Lindsey made The Midnight Moth.

It's a lyrical story about a moth who dies, and two young characters who must find their own way to honour and remember their friend.

It's also an invitation.

The final pages encourage children and their grown-ups to imagine and create a ceremony for the Midnight Moth themselves.

Rituals aren't just things for adults to organise. They're things we can make together and when children are given opportunities to participate, they discover that saying goodbye isn't only about sadness. It can also involve creativity, tenderness, imagination, care and love.

We call this FAMILIARITY BEFORE FAREWELL.

Our hope is that children who have opportunities to explore death through stories and making might feel a little more familiar with these experiences when they encounter them in real life.

Our independently published, 50-page hardback is available now, alongside free downloadable activities.

We have around 100 first-edition copies remaining.

Find The Midnight Moth on our website. Link in bio.

Love you bye

We brought Dad's willow coffin home while he was still very much alive.A month before he died, we carried his coffin int...
10/10/2026

We brought Dad's willow coffin home while he was still very much alive.

A month before he died, we carried his coffin into his living room and sat it in front of him. It looked like a beautiful coffee table.

He'd asked for a willow coffin. Lindsey and I had measured him a few weeks before for his coffin dimensions in that same room. Then we helped weave it, working alongside the wonderful Rachel of Wheatcroft Willow in her studio, using willow grown locally.

When we brought it home, Dad spent time sitting with it.

He ran his hands over the willow. Admired the weaving. Took in its shape and craftsmanship.

He described it as a thing of beauty.

And he told us something that has stayed with us.

It made death feel less alien.

Conventionally, we often encounter the coffin for the first time at the funeral with little opportunity to explore, ask questions or become familiar with what we're seeing.

But Dad got to know his coffin while he was alive. And so did we.

To us it became an object we had made, touched, carried, admired and talked about together. It wasn't something strange or frightening that suddenly appeared at the end.

This experience has profoundly shaped how we think about deathcare at DEAD GOOD.

We believe there is enormous value in becoming familiar with the practical, physical and material realities of death before we're confronted by them.

To make room for curiosity, participation, care and choice.

We call this FAMILIARITY BEFORE FAREWELL.

We wonder what might become possible if more of us had opportunities to encounter deathcare while we're all still very much alive.

The coffin in the pictures was made by our friend Abi of Woven Farewell. We commissioned it to be part of DEAD GOOD's library of ecological coffins.

You can book to weave a coffin with Woven Farewell. They have studios in Sheffield and the South West of England.

Photo credit: Sarah Johnson Photography

Cameos: Debs of Periwinkle Barn and Sarah of Strike Collective

Love you bye

Familiarity before farewell is one of our DEAD GOOD mottos.We regularly support families to find ways to soften the edge...
08/10/2026

Familiarity before farewell is one of our DEAD GOOD mottos.

We regularly support families to find ways to soften the edges of a natural burial.

For many, visiting the spot before the grave is dug is important. Settling somehow.

For some, being involved in preparing the grave is valuable. Whether that's digging earth, decorating with foraged materials or filling the earth in after the lowering of the coffin or shroud.

Purposeful action can be good for grief.

How might we become more familiar with green graves and natural burials before death occurs?

Have you visited the natural burial sites nearest to you?

What are they like?

Love you bye

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