All Soul's Weekend

The tradition & historical record

The All Souls Procession Weekend is an event in Tucson, Arizona. It draws on Mesoamerican, Spanish Roman Catholic, and Mexican rituals, incorporating many diverse cultural traditions with the common goal of honoring and remembering the deceased. ¹

The All Souls Procession Weekend is more commonly known as the All Souls Procession and is derived from the All Souls Procession,[1] an event first initiated and organized in 1990 by Tucson artist Susan Kay Johnson to "express her sorrow" over the recent death of her father and to initiate an artistic ritual in honor of the dead in Tucson. Johnson had studied art therapy based in part on the work of Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Jung including his study of rituals in cultures around the world. After her father died, Johnson planned and invited other artists to participate in a three-day ritual, which lasted from Halloween through All Saints Day and ended on All Souls Day. The ritual took place in public and private spaces in downtown Tucson, and involved art objects Johnson created for the event. By 1991, public interest the ritual led artist Sue Johnson to apply for a grant from the Tucson Partnership in order to involve the Tucson community in the event, through free public workshops in art and music followed by a large procession.[2] One of the artists listed on the grant application, Mykl Wells, has reported that he helped Johnson write the 1991 grant application, on which his name is spelled "Michael Wells." Wells has reported that he helped inspire Johnson's initial planning of the 1990 All Souls Procession when he told Johnson about Día de los Muertos rituals he had witnessed in Guanajuato, Mexico in the 1980s. In 1998, Susan Johnson transferred direction of the procession over to Nadia Hagen-Onuktav, founder of the performance troupe Flam Chen. ¹

All Soul's Weekend culminates with its largest event, a parade called the All Soul's Procession. According to MMOS, “The All Souls Procession is perhaps one of the most important, inclusive and authentic public ceremonies in North America today.” Participants often dress up, wear masks, paint their faces, create intricate artistic installations, and tow altars, also engaging in numerous other forms of expression in remembrance of the deceased. The deceased may include family, friends, pets, endangered species, fallen heroes, victims of war, or any other group that an individual feels deserving of remembrance. The procession is a forum for the community to engage in open authentic expression of grief, loss, joy, and celebration. The procession is led by a large steel sculpture called The Urn in which procession attendees are invited to place prayers, photographs, and other remembrances of lost loved ones. At the end of the procession, The Urn is set on fire. Burning of The Urn serves the purpose of uniting individual remembrances into one cathartic communal expression of both grief and celebration honoring lost loved ones. ¹

Attendance to, and participation in, All Soul's Weekend is free to the public. The event itself includes no sponsor advertising. MMOS is a non-profit organization funded exclusively by donations and Art Grants. All Soul's Weekend costs approximately one dollar per attendee. The total cost for the 2014 procession was $109,850. MMOS expresses pride in the community based nature of All Soul's Weekend and does not intend to seek corporate sponsorship as, “that funding is likely to come with requirements and obligations we are reluctant to take on”. Of all participants in the Procession, an average of 3,000 donate while 97,000 do not. Tax deductible donations from individuals and groups, including businesses and private organizations, may be made to MMOS in support of All Soul's Weekend. ¹

The text above is adapted from the Wikipedia article “All Soul's Weekend”, available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence. ¹

All Soul's Weekend is annual event in Tucson, Arizona, according to the structured record cited below. This entry was generated automatically from that record and has not yet been reviewed by a person familiar with the tradition. ²

The source record links this tradition to 1 external register, which can be verified through the citation. ²