www.gentledusk.org.uk twitter @gentledusk

Islington’s

Dying Matters Festival

2017 Lifting the Taboo, Developing Dialogue…

www.gentledusk.org.uk twitter @gentledusk

Introduction This year for Dying Matters week 2017, Future Matters ran a Dying Matters Festival. The aim

of the Festival was to make space for those important conversations, in lots of different

ways, engaging with as many people as possible and increasing the diversity of our reach.

Moving away from just a 7 day awareness week, local residents were given numerous

opportunities to think about, reflect upon and re-engage with Future Matters on the subject

of death, dying and bereavement.

“We wanted to have a festival theme so we could run a variety of events, engaging new

groups of participants through the arts and engaging all generations through some

focussed work. We also wanted accessible events for those who wouldn’t normally choose

to engage in the subject.”

Debbie Young, Senior Partner, Gentle Dusk

The Festival took place during May and June 2017 with roughly one event per week. We ran

5 events during time:

Dying for a Cuppa open air event

Death Café

Young People’s Death Cafe

Theatre Production “Outside the Box”

Communication and Publicity Strategy

The aim of the Festival was to inspire and engage local residents around Death and Dying,

bolstered by the Dying Matters week campaign and its extensive local and national media

coverage (http://www.dyingmatters.org/page/AwarenessWeek2017). We wanted to:

raise community awareness of the importance of planning for the end of life and end

of life care;

encourage people to talk about death and dying, and to promote how planning can

contribute to a ‘good’ death for individuals and those that care for them; and

promote Future Matters and how the service can support individuals to put their

plans in place.

“We are proud to have reached 316,500 people with our social media campaign, engaged

in long conversations with just under 200 people at our Dying for a Cuppa event and Death

Cafe, provided a space for young people to talk about death and developed some new

networks for young peoples’ work and had a successful, engaging, taboo busting and life

affirming theatre event”.

Mireille Hayden, Senior Partner, Gentle Dusk.

www.gentledusk.org.uk twitter @gentledusk

Dying for a Cuppa

Right in the centre of Islington’s bustling

Angel Central Shopping centre, we offered

free tea and coffee and conversations

about end of life. With our very own

coffee trike complete with barista, our

open air cafe was staffed by 9 Age UK

Islington Future Matters volunteers and

staff who were available to talk about

wills, powers of attorney, advance care

plans and any issue around death and

dying.

Because we had so many staff present we

were really able to have in depth

conversations with all those who engaged

with us. We had some very personal

conversations about end of life and were

able to highlight end of life care planning

and refer to the Islington Future Matters

service as well as signpost to other services.

We spoke to a total of 178 members of the

public. The real success was in the diversity

of people we engaged with.

Death Café

Two weeks after Dying Matters Week, Future Matters delivered a Death Café at Almeida

Café Bar, Almeida Street, N1 1TA.

At a Death Cafe people drink tea, eat cake and discuss death. The aim is to increase

awareness of death to help people make the most of their (finite) lives. Death Cafes never

involve agendas, advertising or set conclusions.

14 people participated in the death café and the feedback was very positive.

“Excellent”, “Fun, spiritual and uplifting”, “Open, caring and kind”

People’s experience of the Death Cafe

www.gentledusk.org.uk twitter @gentledusk

Young People’s Death Cafe

In partnership with Almeida Theatre and the Young Producers group, we supported the

exploration of death and dying with young people by delivering our first ever Young

People’s Death Café. This took place at Almeida Café Bar during May half term. The Young

Producers group had just explored death in their production of Hamlet. Six young people

took part in this event.

We delivered the Death Café in the same way we do for adults and found the conversations

were abounding. The same kind of issues were raised by the participants as in the standard

Death Café format but with a greater emphasis on sudden death, deaths from terrorism and

deaths of grandparents. The young people were very positive about the experience as was

the Participation Producer. All rated the event as excellently facilitated and felt very

comfortable with the format.

“Enriching”, “Thought-provoking”, “Interesting, enlightening, refreshing”

Young People’s experience of the Death Cafe

We have now built a new network for young people’s events and the Almeida Young

Producers team are keen to deliver some more Death Cafes in the future. The event took

place during a period of exam revision which may have affected attendance. We would

need to schedule any future event at a different time when young people are less busy with

exams so around the Day of the Dead (November) might be a more suitable time.

Theatre Production: Outside the Box

The Islington Dying Matters festival culminated with our theatre event “Outside the Box”

that was held at the Union Chapel, Compton Terrace, London N1 2UN.

Funny, wise and taboo busting; a one woman show confronting the elephant in the room

with grace and humour, asking its audience to embrace mortality and look on the bright side

of life, with a weave of untold and surprising stories, a hint of history and some pithy

commentary on the funeral industry from one who knows. This show was played at the

Edinburgh Festival and Brighton Fringe Festival with great reviews.

www.gentledusk.org.uk twitter @gentledusk

Fifty-seven people attended this event and the atmosphere was warm and relaxed with

laughter and a few tears. The audience remained after the show for an open discussion with

the performer and writer Liz Rothschild and Mireille Hayden, Senior Partner Gentle Dusk.

Discussions covered advance care planning, powers of attorney and funerals.

“Engaging, entertaining and thought-provoking”

Outside the box feedback from a spectator (who then decided to join the Future Matters

team and train as a volunteer!)

Communication Strategy

In order to engage with a diverse audience as well as raise awareness of end of life as

extensively as possible, it was very important to deliver a strong communication campaign

as part of our festival. We used a number of different approaches and methods to

disseminate our key messages.

We developed an event page on our website with all key information and links for booking

onto events. We wrote a number of articles targeting both professionals and non

professionals, promoting the festival, individual events, the Future Matters service and

targeting messages to raise awareness of death, dying and planning future end of life care.

Flyers and posters about the events and the Future Matters service were distributed at key

community locations.

Public:

The Islington Gazette (18,445 readership) published a preview of the festival and Union

Chapel Church published an article in their newsletter (1400 subscribers). Promotional flyers

(over 500) and posters were distributed at each event as well as libraries and community

centres (Manor Gardens, Union Chapel). Young people were targeted through Almeida’s

young people’s network (1,000 young people) and Union Chapel members (over 900) were

targeted with information about the theatre event.

Social media was used in the run up to the festival, as well as throughout the festival, with

some activity on facebook and the majority of messages via twitter reaching a total of

316,500. Information was also available on a number of partner websites (the reach of

which we cannot monitor): Angel Central, Age UK Islington, Death Café, Islington Council

What’s On and Union Chapel.

Professionals

Age UK Islington Connected Magazine (296 organisational email addresses and 295

professionals) published an article about the festival. Islington’s GP, social care newsletters

were targeted with articles as well as other key contacts such as Health Watch, St Lukes,

Voluntary Action Islington, Help On Your Doorstep, CEPN, Providers Forum and Islington’s

End of Life Steering Group.

www.gentledusk.org.uk twitter @gentledusk

Summary and Conclusions

This Dying Matters Festival was a resounding success. We engaged in in-depth

conversations with 255 members of the public, we were successful in reaching a very

diverse audience including young people, our social media campaign total reach was

316,514 and our communication strategy reached over 24,000.

The feedback from all our events was extremely positive with many rating the events as

excellent and requesting events to be run more often.

It feels significant to add that our Dying Matters events took place alongside a series of

terrorist events that caused a number of sudden deaths. The Young People’s Death Café

took place a few days after the Manchester Arena bomb following the Ariana Grande

concert and the theatre production took place the morning after the London Bridge and

Borough market attack. It feels important that amidst these events people were offered an

opportunity to discuss death openly.