SACRED WINGS

In this nurturing workshop, you’ll craft a remembrance talisman – a personal object that serves as both keepsake and emotional anchor. Blending the protective resonance of traditional talismans with the act of memorialising someone significant, your talisman will become an object of memory and remembrance.

I am honoured to receive a Winner Award from the Association of Green Funerals Directors (AGFD) for Best Coffin Supplier of the Year.

For me, this is not just personal- it is a validation of burial shrouds as meaningful, environmentally friendly ans spiritually rich alternatives to coffins. I came to to shroud making ans soft cloth covers combined with willow stretchers (so sort of coffins) after many years as a fine artists and lecturer, bringing with me a love of stroy-telling through reclaimed materials, ritual and beauty. I am blown away by the sense of purpose this practice has given me. This award feels like a step forward not only for me , but for all shroud makers, here in the UK and worldwide who are keeping this practice alive.

Together with my friend, colleague, and Luna Arts co-founder Wendy Pye, I’ll be running two creative workshops that open space to talk about death and dying.

Funded by Arts Council England, these sessions are part of our R&D project: Opening Conversations on Mortality Through Creativity.

We’re offering two different workshops — details and booking links are below.
All profits will go directly to St Michael’s Hospice.

Workshop 1: Cloth and Memory Workshop: Reclaiming the Ritual of Shroud
Making 

Sat 20 Sep 2025 11:00 AM – 4:30 PM

St Michael’s Hospice, TN38 0LB

https://www.tickettailor.com/events/lunaarts/1727829

BUY TICKETS – Cloth and Memory Workshop: Reclaiming the Ritual of Shroud Making – St Michaels HospiceShrouds have wrapped our loved ones for thousands of years—simple cloths that offer dignity, care, and connection. Today, as we…www.tickettailor.com

Workshop 2: Where Memories Live: Workshop on Place & Legacy

Sat 4 Oct 2025 11:00 AM – 4:30 PM

St Michael’s Hospice, TN38 0LB

https://www.tickettailor.com/events/lunaarts/1727887

Buy tickets – Where Memories Live: Workshop on Place & Legacy – St Michaels HospiceVisual Artists Dagmara Rudkin & Wendy Pye (Luna Arts), invite you to reflect on the significance of place in your life – wh…www.tickettailor.com

I’m honoured and deeply moved that my shrouds have been named a finalist for the Good Funeral Awards.

This nomination brings hope that more people might be drawn to the quiet tenderness of a shroud, the softness of cloth, the natural cradle of a willow stretcher. A way of care that honours the body, soothes the grief of those left behind, and returns gently to the Earth.

I was deeply honoured to be invited by the Phoenix Art Space curatorial team, Laurence Hill and Lucy Day, to recreate Feministo Collated Sculpture—originally made by pioneering feminist artist Monica Ross. This commission, funded by the Monica Ross Archive, revisits a work that was sadly destroyed in the 1980s, as so many artists’ works are, due to lack of storage.

While I aimed to stay faithful to the original, it felt more important to honour Monica’s creative sensibility: working with found and salvaged materials, garments that speak of domesticity, patriarchy, and women’s lives. I created 16 panels, drilled 440 holes, and used 60 metres of nylon string to assemble them.

Huge thanks to the Phoenix team and to Monica’s family, Alice Ross and Bernard G. Mills, for their support. The exhibition Monica Ross: Unquiet Woman exploring Monica’s practice and legacy runs at Phoenix Art Space until the end of August 2025.

Monica Ross: Unquiet Woman

As part of Luna Arts’ residency at Fabrica and our ACE funded project Opening Conversations on Mortality Through Creativity, Wendy Pye produced the Death Salon. Inspired by eighteenth-century salons, it was a gathering of poets, writers and visual artists exploring how creativity helps us navigate grief.

For the event, Wendy commissioned me to create a soft shroud with quilted wings. Combined with willow stretchers made by Sophia Campbell-Shaw from Woven Farewell, it offered a poetic and gentle alternative to a traditional coffin. As speakers and performers took turns, moving landscapes were projected onto the symbolic body. At the end of the event, the guests were invited to place rosemary as a sign of remembrance. Projection design by Giles Thacker from Shared Space and Light. Images below show some of the artists and writers invited by Wendy, including Erica Buist, Corinna Edwards Colledge , Sybil Al-Mane, Naomi Foyle and Ruth Nation-Toda. The event was hosted by Jess May and Marion Deprez.

As part of an Arts Council England R and D grant to develop Luna Arts, which I co founded with my friend and colleague Wendy Pye, we spent four days in residency at Fabrica in Brighton. We invited a group of artists and academics to join us in running pilot workshops that used creativity to open up conversations about death and dying. Together we designed three different workshops and repeated them with different groups. The feedback we received is now helping shape the next stage of our work with individuals, community groups and hospices.

Wendy and Sybil Al Mane from Flexible Films led thoughtful sessions on Place and Legacy. I collaborated with Dr Jennie Riley on workshops exploring grave goods and shrouds, and Naomi Foyle led powerful creative writing sessions on elegies and grief. We were beautifully supported throughout by funeral celebrants and the co founders of Brighton Coffin Club, Jess May and Gitte Monis.

In All You Can take workshops, which I co facilitated with Dr Jennie Riley, we discussed the emotional properties of objects and cloth . We also designed and created mini shrouds. We also had a very special guest, Lyn Baylis who is a pagan chaplain. Lyn showed us traditional shrouding techniques which she learned from her own mother half a centuary ago.

Together with photographer and filmmaker Wendy Pye, I co-funded Luna Arts, an art organisation specialising in facilitating activities and art events for wellbeing.

We have recently been awarded a project grant from the Arts Council England to develop our organisation and to creatively explore the cultural dimensions of death. Our project examines contemporary beliefs, attitudes, and rituals surrounding funerals, life ceremonies, and memorialisation, while creating a supportive creative space to break down barriers and encourage open conversations about death and dying. We will be working with two hospices and several communities group. We have just completed the first part of our project , the Making Space Residency: Let’s Talk about Death: A Creative Exploration at Fabrica which contained 7 workshops, reflective practice and Death Salon.

Please come to chat about shrouds, commemorative cloth and workshops on shroud making and more. I am on a third floor, 3S6.

Open Studios 2025

Image: Created by Connie Noble

Explore the studios of the artists, designers and creative businesses who work inside Phoenix Art Space. The building is currently home to 120 professional artists at all stages of their careers including painters, photographers, filmmakers and designers. Learn about their practices, processes and ideas and gain insight into the surroundings that serve to support and inspire them.

Exhibitions in the Main Gallery, Window Gallery and Project Space on the ground floor will be open all weekend.

Open Studios 2025 is open

Saturday 17 May – Sunday 18 May, 11.00 – 17.00
Preview Evening: Friday 16 May, 18.00 – 20.30
Everyone welcome, suggested donation £2.

Please note that only the ground floor of Phoenix Art Space is currently wheelchair accessible and all studios floors must be accessed via stairs. If you have any suggestions on how we can make your visit easier, please get in touch.

I am feeling so honoured and grateful to have had this opportunity to talk about my shroud-making practice with Jess May in her Opening Ceremony podcast.

Jess is a celebrant and wears several different hats; she is founder of Crazy Diamonds Celebrations of Life, she is a 1st Living Funerals Specialist and also a wedding celebrant. She is compassionate, sensitive, formidably knowledgeable on anything to do with ceremonies and just a very very warm human being.

So many interesting speakers had been welcome by Jess, from alternative funeral providers, celebrants, film makers to archaeologists and more. They all have one thing in common: they use or explore ways in which rituals provide comfort or tell human stories.