Let’s face it, none of us are getting out alive, but how we deal with our inevitable demise is something artists Chloe Osborne and Steven Aron Williams explore with their inclusive Mortal Made Residency.  

Bringing together artists, writers, death practitioners, therapists and performers they created space for local mortals to explore loss, collective grieving and curiosity/fear of endings.

The artists curated opportunities to make art and exit plans, holding spaces that don’t privilege speaking over other forms of expression. It was a space to work through the British death taboo with subversive acts of moving and making. During the day the residency offered activities and discussion before turning into a Mezcal, Making and Tattoo Parlour in the evening with a menu of Death Residents offering an array of perspectives and experiences. Guests were also be given their very own Exit Strategy Planner to contemplate their own inevitable send off.

The residency will ended with the Send Off Social Club, offering Death Bingo and Mortal Raving to celebrate life and those no longer with us.

The first Mortal Made Residency took place in November 2024 hosted by The Urban Room aka Mugs Coffee Shop. The residency opened with a Community Ofrenda.

Mortal Made / 7th-10th November
Urban Room / Mugs
Harbour Street, Folkestone, CT20 1TP

A Massive thank you to our Death Residents. Link’s to their websites, practices and services are listed below.

Toby Mynott / Funeral Director - Simple Kent Funerals
Sue Bridge / Artist
Ruth Canning / Artist
Clare Redman / Florist / Gingerly Green Flower Farm
Timothy Smithen / Tattooist / BRB Tattoo Folkestone
Phoebe Osborne / Musician
Sharon McCarron / Self Proclaimed Poet
Katie Clements / Poet
Sy Baker / Artist
Anita McKenzie / Interfaith Minister & Artist
Bean / Artist
Ami Robertson / Somantic Therapist
DJ Dalawax

Chloe has been holding arts-led spaces to explore grief and death since 2020, when for many it felt that death got so much closer. It sat differently, crouching on handrails and drifting in the air, infecting thoughts and ways of being. It was no longer an ostracized relative in a far flung land but a close family member, sharing a bathroom.

“Grief is like being in a room by yourself, without the words or ability to describe it to people or to see the way in or out… I could sense that there are other rooms, I could feel the big house of it.” - participant of Grief Lab (hosted in partnership with Yomi Sode @ V&A in 2022)

Chloe is becoming a serial eulogist and doesn’t like it. There aren’t enough words.

What if we, as makers, doers, thinkers, sleepers and eaters found ways to hold ourselves and each other in grief?

What if we found and shared ways to fit the rage and grief, of genocide far away and arms made next door, inside our bodies? What if we could do this and still keep moving?

Yes to words but… 

yes to more, too.

How we Mortals bring death into the sensory and familiar and sit friendly with it.

Steven is a visual artist whose curiosity with death stems from what he sees as a cultural paralysis which afflicts the society he grew up in. Death and grief are swept under the carpet, stoicism prevails. Everything is just dealt with efficiently, the colourful craziness of life discarded. There is such a massive disconnect between the living and the dead.

His traveling has opened his eyes to the attitudes, rituals and traditions of other cultures that feel more honest and human. Perhaps too honest in some instances but he believes there is so much we can learn and take solace in.

It has also led him to contemplate his own inevitable exit. The funerals he has attended over the years (he avoids them if possible) each had a prescribed monotony that didn’t seem to really reflect the people lost. It’s such a shame and made the occasions far more traumatic than they already were.

 If our exits were really contemplated, planned and shared whilst we’re still full of life, perhaps they would be more life-affirming experiences for those left behind?”