ABSTRACT
Arnos Vale Cemetery (AVC) in Bristol, England, is a historic Victorian Garden cemetery opened in 1839. It remains a working cemetery, still accepting burials and ashes, but is also an important community venue, local visitor destination, and popular urban greenspace. The cemetery was originally established as a private joint stock business, Bristol General Cemetery, in 1837, but is now owned by the City Council and run and operated by a charitable trust. The trust undertakes activities to ensure the site remains open to the public. These public events not only raise funds to maintain, restore, and improve the landscape and on-site buildings but are also important educational tools around end-of-life choices, death, remembrance, and death positivity. A year-round programme of tours, talks, exhibitions, and events, including a monthly death café and a yearly death positive festival, is held on site and virtually. The public are encouraged to engage with the deathscape and the stories of those remembered in the site, and to consider their own life and memorialisation through a range of public activities and conversations. AVC is not alone; a number of historic cemeteries throughout the UK are beginning to connect with visitors and local communities through their public engagement programmes, sitting firmly in the heritage landscape of the UK.
