Death Cafe @ Stanley Picker Gallery
A write up of Death Cafe @ Stanley Picker Gallery
By Korina Jaxx
Our Death Café was held on the 16th June at the Stanley Picker Gallery was attended by 11 people (including the organisers). It was organized by Oreet Ashery (Stanley Picker Gallery artist in residence) and Korina Giaxoglou (Kingston University academic) as a way of engaging with the wider public on matters relating to their artistic and research interest in death and dying. As many of the participants remarked, there was a lively cross section of people from all walks of life making the conversation lively and interesting.
For the majority of participants, this was their first Death Café ever making the experience all the more valuable for everyone. Respondents to the end-of-discussion questionnaire reported a range of motivations for joining the discussion group: a friend’s recommendation, a personal quest for meaning, a desire to make the best of life, an interest in (good) death, a fascination with philosophical approaches to consciousness or the realization that we need to start talking about death more openly.
When asked to describe their experience of the Stanley Picker Gallery Death Café participants reported feeling positive, uplifted and delighted to be alive following what they described as a fascinating, really interesting, entertaining, thought-provoking, helpful, enlightening, and valuable discussion. Others noted that the conversation was quite morbid and realised that talking about funerals extensively was not as useful as they had initially envisaged.
Suggestions for future events included holding a death café on a regular basis so as to encourage more in-depth conversations and a next death café with a more practical focus.
Following the Stanley Picker Death Café, one of the participants held her own death café discussion group in New York! We hope more will follow.