North Sydney’s Death Café is breaking taboos and creating space for open conversations…
In a society where death remains one of the last great taboos, North Sydney Community Centre is creating a safe space for people to discuss mortality openly.
Their Death Café initiative, facilitated by experienced civil celebrant Nicky Solomon, offers a unique opportunity for community members to engage in respectful conversations about death and dying in a supportive environment.
“Death is not a bad word. It’s not an offensive word. It should be a word we use,” says Nicky, who has been a celebrant for close to 20 years and conducts both weddings and funerals.
Participants are invited to discuss death and dying over coffee, tea and cake.
The Death Café concept isn’t unique to North Sydney—it was started by Swiss sociologist Bernard Crettaz in 2004 and introduced to London by Jon Underwood in 2011. Nicky explains her role as “almost as an emcee” to ensure respectful conversation where no one monopolises the time or gives information that’s inaccurate.
Nicky emphasises that a Death Café isn’t a bereavement or support group. “We don’t have the expertise to carry those very strong and difficult emotions,” she explains. Instead, it follows specific guidelines for free-ranging conversations about all aspects of death and dying.
Rather than having a prescriptive agenda, each session develops its own unique theme based on what the participants share in their introductions to the group. “In the two that I’ve run, they were so totally different,” Nicky says. “The first one was much more about death of people close to the participants, sharing their grief and their journeys. The second one was about organisational things—wills, power of attorney, enduring guardianships, advanced care directives, and how can we prepare ourselves for our families so they’re not left in a mess when we die.”
The isolation that often accompanies grief was another significant theme. “A few people who were actually grieving talked about how they felt so isolated and alone, that they couldn’t talk about their grief, that there was this societal expectation that they should be over it,” shares Nicky.
Death cafe facilitator, Nicky Solomon
While most participants tend to be older, the cafés have attracted people ranging from their early 30s to their 70s. One younger participant, who had lost her parents early in life, shared how she makes it a habit of writing physical letters to her closest friends every couple of years to express her appreciation. “She really understands the impermanence that surrounds us,” says Nicky.
North Sydney Community Centre has already hosted two successful Death Cafés and is planning more, with the next daytime session scheduled for next week, followed by their first evening session on Friday, 4 April.
For those hesitant about attending, Nicky offers reassurance: “It is a very gentle and a very safe space. There are some people who come and simply listen, and that is absolutely okay.”
Nicky was introduced to the Death Café concept when the North Sydney Community Centre approached her while she was attending playgroup with her grandchild. Having previously conducted a memorial service for the Centre’s Death and Dying weekend, Nicky was their ideal choice to facilitate these important conversations.
“I think there is definitely a zeitgeist,” Nicky says about the growing interest in discussing death openly. “There is a movement of people wanting to be more active, to look at funerals a different way… and also as we live longer and know that decrepitude will come to us all if we live long enough, we want to say what our wishes are in the dying process as well as the funeral afterwards.”
Nicky shares that her mother-in-law had specifically requested Vera Lynn’s “Wish Me Luck (As You Wave Me Goodbye)” to be played at her funeral. “To be able to play that at the end and say ‘Joan chose this song’ was so special,” she says.
Upcoming Death Cafe sessions
When: Friday, 14 March 2025
Time: 10:00am – 12:00pm
Fri 4 April 2025
Time: 6:30pm – 8:30pm
