islington’s - gentle dusk · debbie young, senior partner, gentle dusk the festival took place...
TRANSCRIPT
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.