At a Death Cafe, people, often strangers, gather to eat cake, drink tea or coffee and discuss death.
Meeting friends at the café to chat about death might not be at the top of everyone’s bucket list but the Death Café project is catching on!
At a Death Cafe, people, often strangers, gather to eat cake, drink tea or coffee and discuss death. Already there have been over 2,200 Death Cafes held over the past four years worldwide, mainly in Europe, North America and Australasia.
The Death Café’s objective is ‘to increase awareness of death with a view to helping people make the most of their (finite) lives’.
The cafes are based on the ideas of Swiss sociologist, Bernard Crettaz, who studied and questioned the rituals and customs surrounding death. His idea for the ‘café mortel’ was simple: a gathering in a restaurant or cafe, anyone could come, and Crettaz himself would host the conversation.
The rule was that there was to be no prescription: no topic, no religion, no judgement. Crettaz wanted people to talk as openly on the subject as they could. His first café mortel took place in 2004 in the Swiss town of Neuchâtel, others took up his model and the movement has been growing ever since.
Host your own Death Cafe
Death Cafe is what’s known as a ‘social franchise’. This means that people who sign up to the organisation’s guide and principles can use the Death Café name, post events to the website and talk to the press as an affiliate of Death Cafe.
The Death Cafes are run on a not-for-profit basis in an accessible space, and importantly, with no intention of leading people to any conclusion, product or course of action. True to Dr Crettaz’ original vision, Death Cafe is keen to emphasise there is no hidden agenda, objectives or themes and the cafes are more of a discussion group than a counselling session.
The Death Café guide is very comprehensive and you can look at some of the other events on the website to get ideas. If you happen to be near the NSW mid-North Coast, there will be a Death café held in the town of Bellingen on 9 August [see information here]. The city of Fremantle, south of Perth in WA has been running regular Death Cafés since 2013.
See more at: www.deathcafe.com
