As part of Southbank Centre's year-long Belief and Beyond Belief festival, Ted Hodgkinson, Senior Programmer for Literature and Spoken Word at Southbank Centre, invited Rachel to co-curate A Funeral for the Living - a special poetry and song service to sit within a weekend of events exploring the question: How Do We Live with Death?
Rachel curated the poetic element of the service, inviting some of the best poets of our generation to read on life, love or loss. Poets included: Jack Underwood, Emily Berry, Karen McCarthy-Woolf, Mona Arshi and Kayo Chingonyi. Also invited was Kris Hallenga, founder of Coppafeel breast cancer charity, to offer a speech on living with cancer and the healing properties of hope. The David Idowu choir sang uplifting spirituals between readings and, at the end, even convinced the audience to join in for a communal rendition of Primal Scream's Movin' On Up.
