Hello everyone,
We hope you’ve enjoyed this Jubilee weekend.
At Death Café we're enjoying making time to talk about death. Wherever we run our cafés they always seem to maintain a special atmosphere and intimacy. We’ve now had over a 100 people come to Death Café and remain excited about the possibilities of this work.
We’ve had some memorable times this year so far following #DeathFest at the end of January. London Faerie and Kristie West convened Death Cafes at the Pot. We also ran 2 Death Cafes in May, one at the Create Place in Bethnal Green facilitated by Sue Barsky Reid and another in a café called Cakey Muto facilitated by me.
All have been wonderful and have led us to organise another 4 Death Cafés in East London over the next 8 weeks. You can read all the details in an article on Death Cafe's Alternative Summer. They’re all in Cakey Muto, a lovely café on the Chatsworth Road, E5, Hackney and we have 4 different, amazing facilitators.
The first café is soon – this Wednesday evening 6th June from 7 – 9pm. It will be led by London Faerie, the founder of Sacred Pleasures. Faerie says:
“In my work I create spaces where people can expand their sexual potential and through this become happier, more whole beings. Death, like sex, is a big taboo in our society – it can be spoken about, but only in prescribed and measured ways. Death Café offers a space where people can speak and be heard as they are, exploring this difficult and important subject. Somehow this taboo-busting approach overlaps with my work, and it’s my honour to host Death Café for the 2nd time this Wednesday.”
Please do come along!
The second café will be facilitated by the lovely Shokti Lovestar on the 20th June and will be specifically for the LGBT community. We are very proud to be offering what we think is the first LGBT Death Café in the world! The final 2 Death Cafes will be led by our wonderful friend Kristie West and Sue Barsky Reid, the UK’s original Death Café facilitator.
We are delighted at the impact that the Death Café events and website seem to be having. Our guide to running your own Death Café has generated interest and action far and wide. We’re getting in touch with some brilliant people, such as Kathy McCormick who wrote the following words to be sent out in our update:
Kathy McCormick, from Melbourne Australia is coming to the UK in late June, July, early August to check out the exciting creative activities engaging the public on the topic of death, dying and grief. After years of coordinating community festivals, art projects and consultations, Kathy is now working at a funeral home and seeing synergies in the overlap of her roles. A grant from the Australia Council is allowing her to travel to different countries to meet up with like minded folk and even doing an artist residency in Oaxaca, Mexico for the Day of the Dead celebrations. If you would like to let Kathy know about your work, feel free to email her at: aughra9@yahoo.com.au
We’ll leave you with a link to some brilliant death art, sent by Andriana Cassimatis who runs the Black Ribbon Blog (thanks Andriana!)
All the best,
Jon, on behalf of the Death Café team.
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