Cut a piece of cloth (an old sheet or curtain lining, preferably white) about 4 feet long and shoulder width wide. Sew a slot down each side and put garden canes or tent poles down. If you want a banner to hang down one side, tack it on the edge of one of the slots and make sure it is not too long so you trip over it or it drags on the ground. Our Iraq war stretcher banner said "KILLED BY LIES AND OIL. FUNDED BY YOU AND ME"

Making a dummy body.

Stuff old small stretchy clothes (from charity shops) with light weight things. Stretchy clothes like fleeces are easier to stuff and much easier to sew together when you are affixing head, body and legs. We used a cardboard box for the chest and for the pelvis and plastic bottles for the arms and legs and 4 litre milk cartons etc. This is much lighter, quicker and less lumpy than newspaper or old clothes.

Remember you are making a symbol. It doesn't have to be anatomically correct! Dark clothes are good against the white stretcher background and great for black and white photos in newspapers. We used old tights and then pulled old leggings over them so that the feet stuck out. It is quite good to have the feet stuck out of the end of the stretcher. The legs can then go all limp and bendy which is good for carrying on the bus luggage rack and looks effective, as that is how dead people's legs go - at funny angles.

Stuff the top and bottom separately and then sew the top onto the leg parts.

For the head we used a knee high tight stuffed with crumpled balls of newspaper.

For the neck we rolled up a newspaper, sellotaped it together andstuck one end up into the head; the other into a hole we made in the cardboard box in the chest.

To affix the head to the body, we only had to sew the welt of the tight onto the neck of the stretchy fleece top.

Hands... Don't worry about having these as you are making a symbol

Face... We used a plain white human mask from a craft shop, painted it and added an old wig on one body and a horror mask from Hallowe'en on another. The mask had a black cloth back part, which was very handy to go over the stuffed head and sew onto the neck of the fleecy top. We pinned down the chin of the horror mask to the fleece top with safety pins.

Or you could just make a rough body shape and cover it entirely with a white sheet as a shroud, or have face and feet hanging out of the shroud sheet. A child or baby body would be poignant and easy to carry too.

Carrying to the venue:

You should be able to tuck the stretcher with its body occupant under your arm, or put it all in a rucksack (hence usefulness of bendy legs and of flexible tent poles that fold up.)

If you use flexible tent poles, they may bend too much so push a short garden cane down into the middle of the slot alongside the poles to prevent this.

Sign on the body:

A sign round the neck with string is a good addition. The one on our Iraq War body said

LOST.

100,000 LIVES

CIVIL LIBERTIES

OUR SAFETY

Visibility:

Your body will probably slump down slightly into the stretcher so prop it up with a pillow under the shoulders so it is visible with its face and the sign round its neck to the side you want photographing; the side you have the banner hanging down.

Check before you go too, because it would be a shame to make something and then find it could not be seen; hidden rather than displayed by the stretcher so all these details are important.

Static pavement layout:

You can put your body, stretcher and banner on the pavement and add a mourner or two draped in black kneeling beside still and silent. A raised place is good for visibility; steps are ideal.

The format was also used for an NHS protest march:

For an account of the way we used the stretcher and body format at the Time To Go march in Manchester on September 23 rd 2006, see the 'Victim of War' section on the Tableaux Page.

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