Ellie has lived in Bournemouth her whole life. She said: “I was really keen to put on a death cafe locally because there are a lot of people out there who still haven’t heard of a death cafe and there still aren’t that many opperunities for us to actually sit down and say how do we actually feel about this.”
She added that she thought the scheme would be very beneficial for the area. She said: “it would be a really great thing if we were able to run them regularly because there are more and more people who are asking these questions and are in need of somewhere to go to explore death.”
The whole point about it is giving people room to speak, space to explore
Death cafes aim to provide safe, informal, friendly settings for people to explore their feelings about death.
Ellie said the open discussion at these events was beneficial for society. She said: “the whole point about it is giving people room to speak, space to explore.”
She added: “when your given permission to talk about it in a safe setting a lot of people find that it’s quite helpful and can be a healthy thing .”
She also said: “it’s a chance to talk about your personal experiences and have those witnessed and honoured or you may have questions that you want to throw out into group discussion.”
Particularly western culture where we have an opportunity to explore how we feel about it
She thinks this is especially important due to the topic being a “taboo”. She said: “there aren’t many opportunities in our everyday lives, particularly in western culture where we have an opportunity to explore how we feel about it until we’re confronted with death .”
Ellie suggested this exploration of death was good for society. She said: “death we know is the one thing thats going to happen to all of us without fail and its one of the things that really doesn’t get talked about very much.”
Ellie planned to remedy this through her event, which aims to get different people talking, sharing and exploring death together.
Her death cafe will be taking place 7:30 on Tuesday at Broadstone’s Cargo Lounge.
See some clips from the interview with Ellie below.
