Managing collective memory through funeral events

an experience design perspective

Laws, Chantal ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0059-6014 (2026) Managing collective memory through funeral events. In: Routledge Handbook of Dark Events: Celebrations, Heritage, and Customs of Death and the Macabre. Taylor & Francis, London, pp. 375-387. ISBN 9781003479536

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Abstract / Summary

This chapter adopts an experience design perspective to explore how collective grief and mourning are configured through funeral events. Funerals can be conceived as a novel form of dark events, sitting slightly outside the established dark tourism conceptual framework due to their typically closed nature and more individualised, private and personal scale. Through a focus on the transformative design aspects, funerals are recognised as events that encompass the real and imaginary and are therefore dimensionally complex events with diverse experiential elements. They provide an opportunity to further extend the field of dark events beyond an explicit tourism and leisure lens, and illuminate the power, influence and discursive practices inherent in lifestage events that Critical Event Studies (CES) perspectives encourage us to explore further. Whilst focusing on the theoretical elements to frame this development, the discussion also incorporates research undertaken by the author and colleagues which draws on professional experiences of funeral events organisation.

Keywords: collective mourning; creative event design; funeral experiencescape; transformation.

Item Type:	Book Section
ISBN:	9781003479536
Subjects:	Business > Experience Design
Department:	Cornwall Business School
Depositing User:	Chantal Laws
Date Deposited:	08 Oct 2026 15:10
Last Modified:	08 Oct 2026 15:10
URI:	https://repository.falmouth.ac.uk/id/eprint/6542

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