First Death Cafe in Scotland with Final Fling

Final Fling celebrates its first birthday by hosting Scotland's first Death Café.

Glad to be Alive :: Death Cafe will be held on Tue 14 May 6pm-7.30pm in Glasgow's popular Southside venue, The Glad Cafe. The Cafe is free to attend - 'save a seat' below.

A Death Cafe is an informal group discussion over a cuppa. The group is encouraged to talk about how their life experience informs their view of death and how their experience of death shapes their life.

"I expect Glad to be Alive to appeal to ordinary folk who want to share thoughts about a subject that we are told is a taboo," said Barbara Chalmers, Founder of Final Fling. "It's not a counselling session. It's not a goth-fest. It's just a friendly place to talk openly - shrug off any notion of taboo. With cake!"

"Death is both ordinary and extraordinary. It used to be very much part of life but somehow these days, death is hushed up, cleaned up, kept out of sight. It's not useful. A Death Cafe offers 'permission to talk'. And evidence shows that where we talk, we have better experiences of death. Our birthday survey of 100 users revealed that not a single one found the subject taboo. "

"Great news. It's fantastic that Final Fling will run the first Death Cafe in Scotland."
Jon Underwood, Death Cafe Founder 

Jon Underwood, founder of the Death Café movement said: “It's great to see FInal Fling take this model north - the first in Scotland! I held the very first Death Cafe in my home and since then have run them at the Royal Festival Hall, in a yurt and in ordinary cafes. They allow people to think and talk about death and share their feelings and experience. The sessions so far tell us that there is an appetite for this.” Since September 2011, 25 Death Cafes have been held in 6 countries. The idea originally came from Bernard Crettaz, a Swiss sociologist. It was picked up by Jon in England and it's spread to the US via Lizzy Miles. 

Glad to be Alive :: Death Cafe continues Final Fling's efforts to normalise death and dying. The Cafe is being organised as part of Final Fling's contribution to national Dying Matters Awareness Week, 13-19 May. Final Fling is also offering free Wills throughout May to encourage people to take up this year's Awareness Week theme: Be Ready.

Now one year old, Final Fling was named Best New Website in May 2012 following its launch and in September won the UK industry award for Most Outstanding Contribution to Understanding Death at the Good Funeral Awards. The site has had over 200,000 hits and has attracted interest from across the world. See more about our first year.