Day of the Dead

Día de Muertos ( Day of the Dead ) is an important annual event with Catholic and Aztec roots. It takes place on 1st and 2nd November, and is celebrated by Mexicans, in Mexico, the USA, the UK and across the world.

The event comprises beautiful rituals that honour the lives of many departed ancestors with happiness and love. Families remember their dead and place altars in their homes. They decorate tombs and attend huge street events, too.

Dr Jane Lavery, Associate Professor in Latin American Studies at Southampton University, is conducting a large-scale research project around the Mexican Day of the Dead. The aim is to explore the Day of the Dead in school, civic community, and social health care contexts.

Dr Lavery is inviting children to take part in in Day of the Dead activities at school. She created these hands-on activities to enhance cultural awareness. They draw on her groundbreaking research and work with secondary curriculum enhancement.

We invite schools to share images or videos of their creations each year, on November 1st to 2nd, via X . There's also a Day of the Dead altars video competition for secondary schools. Dr Lavery runs this as a collaboration with the Mexican Embassy to the UK.

We invite about 100 secondary school children and staff to our campus for Day of the Dead each year, too. There's an engaging lecture about the festivity followed by a fun quiz. We also build an altar to demonstrate the meaning behind each component.

Listed below, you'll find some of the activities and teaching resources you can use. These are helpful in the lead-up to the Mexican Day of the Dead. For example, you could start working with pupils on artworks or an alter in the weeks before.

Other activities to help children to learn about Day of the Dead include sugar skull painting and making paper marigolds. You could also try writing typical Day of the Dead poems ( calaveritas ).

The Day of the Dead is a family event engaging children and adults of all ages. Activities are suitable for all years in secondary school, from year 7 to 13. They also span different subjects like Spanish, art, design and technology, media studies and the humanities. The children could add their own spin on their creations.

Introducing the sociocultural context of Day of the Dead to students

What is Day of the Dead and why is it important to celebrate in schools in the UK?

School Day of the Dead events are widely celebrated in schools in America as the Mexican American diaspora is very large. In the UK, the Mexican community is very important too and many Mexicans here celebrate the Día de Muertos.

Organising related activities in UK schools helps celebrate cultural differences and inclusivity. It shows that the festivity is not a Mexican Halloween. It's a religious and cultural event with Catholic and Indigenous roots. These school activities aim to promote respectful cultural appropriation.

Discover more about the context of the Day of the Dead:

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Day of the Dead

Hands-on activities

Introducing the sociocultural context of Day of the Dead to students