Daily Archives: January 24, 2023

What do we need from a cemetery landscape in the 21st century? Accounting for the popularity of cremation and other forms of dealing with the dead in contrast to burial, many new spaces have been designed to deal with this change in taste. The landscape gardeners of yore have largely made way for professional architectural practices, some attached to high level projects such as the regeneration of Highgate Cemetery or the first opening of a cemetery in London for fifty years. Sheldon will highlight a number of these projects and their approach to creating new gardens of memory and compare this to the values that faced our magnificent garden cemeteries two centuries before.

This is the final installment of the Gardens Trust’s four part series on Gardens of Peace. £5. Register through Eventbrite HERE. Attendees will be sent a Zoom link 2 days prior to the start of the talk, and a link to the recorded session (available for 1 week) will be sent shortly afterwards.

Sheldon K Goodman is a public historian, tour guide, heritage professional and founder of Cemetery Club, which seeks to show cemeteries as ‘Museums of People’ that are full of social history rather than as morbid, mournful spaces to be avoided. As a heritage communicator, he has worked with museums and other heritage spaces, including co-developing the first event to celebrate queer history in a historic cemetery (the first in the U.K) entitled ‘Queerly Departed’ for the Royal Parks, with successful sequels for Arnos Vale and Birmingham Jewellery Quarters Cemeteries Trust. He has also worked with the Brunel Museum, created visual content for Schools Out UK and has given talks at the National Archives and at the BBC. Sheldon is also a qualified City of Westminster guide and regularly leads walks around the British Museum and London’s pubs.