Who knew that coffins could be this fun?
On Saturday we took two coffins, several hundred coloured balls and a fairly ridiculous quantity of craft materials up the road to the Horniman Museum & Gardens.
We had been invited to take part in its Day of the Dead celebrations.
There are sentences I never expected to say when I became a funeral director. “Would you like to get into the coffin ball pit?” is one of them.
A blank coffin and no particular plan
We brought along a plain cardboard coffin and covered the tables with Posca pens, tape, felt flowers, jewels, stencils and anything else we thought might be fun to use.
There was no design to follow. We simply invited people to add something.
It did not stay blank for long.
Children of all ages added skulls, flowers, hearts, ghosts, messages, scribbles and drawings.
Some people spent ages working on one tiny part. Others added something in a few seconds and moved on.
Gradually all those individual marks disappeared into one wonderfully chaotic thing.
And then there was the coffin ball pit
Our other coffin was made from jute. We filled it with coloured balls and invited people to climb in.
Children generally needed very little encouragement. Adults tended to laugh first.
Most of us only encounter a coffin when someone has died.
Take that same object somewhere completely different, allow people to touch it, decorate it, play around it and ask questions, and the feeling around it changes.
That was really the point.
What we brought home
By the end of the afternoon, we had two completely unique coffins.
They are now back with us at Poetic Endings and both are available to be used for a funeral.
There is no charge for either of them. If someone chooses one, we will simply invite them to make a donation to charity.
I love the thought that something decorated collectively by hundreds of people in the Horniman gardens might eventually become part of somebody's funeral.
Thank you to the Horniman for inviting us, and to everyone who drew, stuck, scribbled, climbed into a coffin or stopped for a conversation.
