James and Lawrence |
By James Norris of Dead Social
Last week DeadSocial took a week off from
our normal activities to run a popup shop in London and host a series of events
and workshops during Dying Matters Awareness Week. One of the highlights was an event called ‘Death Café’.
Death Café is a place for open discussion
around death. Over 100 Death Cafés have now occurred across the globe. They
help to bring people together and to discuss death in an overt and
nonjudgmental way.
Death Café’s founder Jon Underwood hosted
the event on Wednesday. Proceedings began by Jon asking us all to introduce
ourselves to one another at the start of the evening.
Once we had all introduced ourselves the
conversion began. I knew that Death Café followed the agenda of “no defined
agenda” but I secretly thought that stimuli of some sort would be required… I
was wrong. The conversation flowed from the offset and didn’t stop until the
end of the evening.
Those attending Death Café and visitors to the
popup space over the course of the week were able to write their pre-death wishes
on it. This activity also took place on wall echoing the same statement.
I found Death Café both fascinating and
empowering. I also loved and fully support the guideline that religious beliefs
should be respected but at the same time religion was not the focus of the café.
Religion was therefore touched upon however not debated at length.
The passion for or against religion or
non-religious beliefs could very easily act as a catalyst and turn the café
into a debate rather than a discussion. I am happy that this was not the case.
I would encourage anyone who is interested
in discussing death to attend a death café. If there is not one planned in your
local area then you may want to consider hosting
one.
I look forward to attending another Death
Café again soon and hopefully reconnect with some of those I met last week.
This is so awesome! I love the coffins and of course the Before I Die wall!!!
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