photo by: Emanuel Ramírez

Eloise McDaniel, left, and Sofía Romero join with many friends and neighbors on Nov. 1, 2021, in North Lawrence in a Day of the Dead remembrance.

A community Día de los Muertos event on Wednesday will pay tribute to deceased loved ones and include a special installation for those who died of COVID-19.

The community group Somos Lawrence is organizing the event in collaboration with The Percolator Artist Collective. As part of the event, altars honoring people’s deceased loved ones will be displayed throughout the Common Ground garden at John Taylor Park, 200 N. Seventh St., with a larger central installation to honor all who have died in the context of the pandemic, according to a news release.

The event is free and open to the public and will take place on Wednesday from 6 to 8 p.m. Hot chocolate and Mexican sweet bread will be served. The setting up of the ofrenda, or altar, will begin at 11 a.m., and people are welcome to drop by throughout the day to contribute flowers, notes, artwork, pictures of loved ones or other tributes.

About 9,600 people have died of COVID-19 in Kansas, including 163 people in Douglas County, according to state and local data. The release notes those deaths as well as the others that happened during the pandemic, stating that Día de los Muertos rituals, which began on Oct. 26 and end on Wednesday, honor loved ones and are “simultaneously happy and sad.”

“Throughout this celebration of the Day of the Dead, ‘Somos Lawrence’ families, and the Lawrence Percolator hope to offer a venue to highlight a communal experience of loss, while attentive to the singularity of every death amidst such overwhelming statistics,” the release states.

photo by: contributed

A flyer provides information about a community Day of the Dead event.

Last year, Somos Lawrence was one of several organizations that helped coordinate a community ofrenda that also included a special tribute to people who have died while experiencing homelessness, as the Journal-World reported. That ofrenda included photos and other tributes for those individuals.

This year’s event is funded by a grant from the Douglas County Heritage Conservation Council, and was also planned in coordination with the Ballard Center and the Common Ground community garden program, according to the release. Somos Lawrence, which is housed in the Ballard Center, advocates for effective and culturally informed grassroots outreach to non-English speaking residents of Douglas County, with specific attention to Spanish speakers. Lawrence Percolator is an artist collective that works to create a more supportive environment for the arts, and to create new places for the public to learn about and experience the arts.