Death Café, London

The British Humanist Association Community Services Team has been working closely with the National Council for Palliative Care on the Dying Matters Agenda. If you haven’t heard of Dying Matters before, it is ‘a coalition of 32,000 members across England and Wales, which aims to help people talk more openly about dying, death, and bereavement, and to make plans for the end of life.’ This has particular relevance to both our Ceremonies and Pastoral Support services and it is our intention to do some coordinated action during Dying Matters awareness week 2017, which takes place on the week of 8–14 May.

The BHA Community Service team will be holding a Death Café at Conway Hall in London on Friday 12 May at 18.30–21.15. Invitations to this event will be sent out in early April. Many thousands of people have already attended one of these Death Café events but if you haven’t, all you need to know is that it's an informal gathering where people (who want to) discuss death over tea and cake! What could be better?

As part of our coordinated action, we would like to encourage all our Celebrants and Pastoral Carers, with an interest in this area, to think about setting up a Death Café of your own in your local area. We are lucky that our London event is being hosted by the founder of the Death Café movement, Jon Underwood.