NDAN Presents - Stories of connection and community in planning for end of life.
Frances Logan and Harpreet Kalsi-Smith will share their lived experiences and work as advocates by exploring the complexities of caring, communicating and connecting people in and between communities.
Death has become largely hidden in society resulting in many people being denied opportunity to discuss what is important to them in life, during illness and as death approaches. A diagnosis of a life limiting illness and or a sudden death can reveal their lack of preparedness for such an experience.
Much of the knowledge, skills and emotional readiness to meet the challenges and opportunities of caring for our people as they age, approach deteriorating capacity and death have been put aside or lost.
Fragmented, siloed health and support services often with limited access due to being situated in cities far away brings overwhelming confusion and lack of coherent information for communities.
There is an urgent need to embed conversations and tangible support about living and dying into our health and education services, indeed throughout our social fabric. This needs to happen when we are well, around a diagnosis of life limiting illness, remaining ongoing as a person dies, and afterwards as grief and loss are experienced.
Frances Logan. a qualified Funeral Celebrant, draws on her volunteer roles with Hospice Volunteers South (Tasmania) and Lifeline which brought her into connection with people living with life limiting illness, their carers and those bereaved by the death of people of significance in their lives. She is a member of Palliative Care Queensland and the National Register of Consumers and Carers (Palliative Care Australia). Qualifying as a Speech Pathologist and a Counsellor enables Frances to participate in provision of services across health, education, private practice and services for people with disability in the non-government sector. In her many years of providing services as a Speech Pathologist, Counsellor and Celebrant and now as a volunteer and advocate, the core of her practice is collaboration: caring, communicating and connecting with families, carers and service providers.
Harpreet Kalsi-Smith is an Australian Indian woman who was born in Kenya and raised on the lands of the Turrbul and Yuggera peoples. She brings 20 years of experience specialising in health and wellbeing, community development, driving innovation and change. She founded the Kindness Company, a social change collective that works with individuals and communities to build capacity to live well, age well and die well.
Harpreet’s passion to advocate and work in end-of-life care commenced after supporting her mother during her final months of end of life. Her own lived experience and that of carers and people who have died from a range of illnesses including dementia and cancer, have driven her to work for better care for all approaching end of life. Harpreet holds a Masters in Conflict Resolution, is a board member of Compassionate Communities Australia, Palliative Care Australia and Queensland Palliative Care Clinical Network consumer advocate, integral sound healer, reiki master, trauma informed practitioner and end of life doula.
DATE - Saturday 9 November 2024, 9AM - 11AM AEST.
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NDAN Presents - Death care for the Australian LGBTQI community
In this dynamic panel, funeral professionals from across Australia come together to explore the many and varied facets of what it is to give good, supportive and nurturing care to the LGBTQIA+ community. Whether you are a part of the community and wanting to know more about how to advocate for you and yours, or if you are an ally, this session aims to provide some valuable discussions we can all learn from.
Our panelists include:
Catherine Petropoulos – Natural Grace Funerals, Hini Hanara – Queer Death Collective, Ben Gibson – Life Rites Funerals, Victoria Spence – Life Rites Funerals and Shannon Beresford – Your Path Guide.
DATE - Saturday 7 December 2024, 9AM - 11AM AEST.
Past events
Here are a few of the events we have hosted recently.
NDAN Presents - Lyndal Thorne reflects on Burying Neil... as a family.
Lyndal Thorne is and arts administrator and advocate, who has been working on natural burial longer than many people. She champions of the value of the arts to regional communities and recognises the immense creative talent of individuals within those communities. Arts advocacy has tipped her into the activism space on numerous occasions. It was through an arts project back in 2014 that she and her family's interest in death literacy and natural burial began. In 2021 her father died after a long illness. The family were determined to do things themselves. In this session she will step through the home funeral and natural burial they were able to organise for him, how it happened, what worked and what didn’t… to ultimately lay him to rest themselves and do what served their grief best.
This event was held on Saturday 5 October 2024.
NDAN Presents - Water Cremation in Australia
Brendan Cooper and Luke Cripps have spent the last twelve months deep in the process of opening the first fully assessed and approved, dedicated water cremation facility in Australia. Having received their final regulatory approvals on the 7-June-2024, they are now able to offer this service to families in Tasmania. In this session, Luke presented on the process of opening the facility, the regulatory environment in which it sits, a little on the history of the process in Australia, details of the process itself (including environmental benefits and drawbacks), community feedback and reception, and answered questions from attendees.
This event was held on Saturday 10 August 2024.
NDAN Presents - Traditions of Death and Burial with Dr Helen Frisby
We often hear in Australia, people talk about the traditions of the funeral industry, how we do what we do. An often-overlooked fact, is that through the colonisation of Australia we inherited our traditions from Europe with little regard to the traditions our indigenous communities had for thousands of years. So, where then do our current ‘traditions’ come from?
Dr Helen Frisby is an expert funeral historian and who shared her work on the development of the British funeral traditions.
This event was hosted on Thursday 6 June 2024.
NDAN Presents - Death Care for LGBTQIA+ people with Ezra Salter
This event will explore the unique end of life issues faced by the LGBTQ+ community and what we can do to be better prepared for ourselves and our community elders.
Ezra Salter (they/them) is a Louisiana licensed funeral director and embalmer practicing in New Orleans and a board member of Wake, a New Orleans based deathcare non-profit. Ezra is the progenitor and co-creator of the Louisiana LGBTQ+ End of Life Planning Guide and contributor to The Order of the Good Death’s end-of life planning resources for the LGBTQ+ community. Ezra's professional focus includes advocacy for queer deathcare and green burial options in Louisiana and the preservation of historic cemeteries in New Orleans.
This event was hosted on Saturday 13 April 2024.
NDAN Presents - The Work of the Dead in Private Law with Dr Kate Falconer
Death is traditionally seen as the endpoint for the individual as a legal person. In private law in particular, the post-death person is conceptualised not so much the opposite of the pre-death person, but the absence of the pre-death person. But we can challenge this accepted view. In this talk we will adopted Avery Gordon’s framework of ‘haunting’ to critically examine the ‘work’ done by the dead in disputes over their bodies. In doing so, we will assess the extent to which the deceased continues to be present and to have a presence in at least some private law disputes.
Dr Kate Falconer is a Lecturer at the TC Beirne School of Law at the University of Queensland. Her research interests lie in the law of the dead and bodily disposal, and the ways in which the private law interacts with death, the dead, and dead bodies. She is particularly interested in the impacts and implications of new death technologies both for private law and society more broadly.
This event was hosted on Saturday 24 February 2024.
NDAN Presents - Carked It! with CEO Simon Lowe
Simon is an expert in strategic partnerships, design thinking, system and behavior change. He utilizes his knowledge to create innovative solutions that address both systemic and individual issues. A co-founder of People Tech Revolution, a tech company focused on immersive VR experiences that prioritize leadership, empathy, diversity, and inclusion, aiming to deepen people's understanding of themselves and others, Simon shares the CEO role and leads business development.
He is deeply passionate about social issues and endeavors to create a more equitable world. Simon is a strong advocate for gamification as a tool for addressing important issues. He takes pride in launching a card game called Carked it! aimed at stimulating meaningful conversations around dying and death, with the goal of facilitating a better end of life experience while also creating a lot of laughs!
This event was hosted on Saturday 2 December 2023.
NDAN Presents - Janine Marriott, Cemeteries as Living Spaces
Janine Marriott is the Public Engagement Manager at Arnos Vale Cemetery, UK and part time Doctoral student at the University of Hertfordshire. Her research interests include public engagement, public history, dark tourism, and historic cemeteries as heritage spaces.
Janine will share with us her work both on and in cemeteries - creating community engagement and spaces for the living and the dead.
Arnos Vale is a unique cemetery and beloved Bristol landmark. Established at the start of Queen Victoria’s reign, its architects created a scenic garden for gentle recreation and respectful remembrance of those who had passed. Following this tradition, Arnos Vale has been re-established as a serene final resting place, a beautiful natural landscape. Arnos Vale Cemetery is a charity run national heritage site, located in the heart of Bristol and set within 45 acres of stunning green woodland ecosystem.
This event was hosted on Saturday 4 November 2023
NDAN Presents - Seth Viddal - Human Composting in Colorado
Seth Viddal of the Natural Funeral in Colorado will be joined us to talk about Natural Organic Reduction and how they do it!
Seth is the Chief Executive Officer of The Natural Funeral, Colorado’s first holistic and ecological funeral home. Prior to serving in this role, he acted as the company’s Chief Operating Officer and has helped the company grow since its first brick-and-mortar facility opened in Lafayette, Colorado, in March 2019. He has an interdisciplinary studies degree from Naropa University.
The Natural Funeral is an independent holistic and ecological funeral home that was the first to offer alkaline hydrolysis and natural organic reduction services in Colorado. They offer a guided participatory experience with families called Reverent Body Care, where they lead families through hands-on care of their loved ones. Families are invited to co-create meaningful rituals and choices about how their bodies are returned to the Earth.
This event was hosted on Saturday 12 August 2023
NDAN PRESENTS - DYING TO KNOW DAY - DEATH DOULA DIALOGUES
2023 Dying to Know Day, NDAN was proud to present Tracey Rusden of EOL Bucketlist and Heidi Greig of KI Doula Service, Both Tracey and Heidi work full time as Doulas, serving their communities and bettering the end of life experiences.
Through storytelling and rich sharing of their experiences they will talk about their work, what it's like to support people both in community and in hospitals and how they are working to support the end of life for their clients.
Join with us for an evening of wonderful conversation and learning.
This event took place on Friday 4 August 2023.
Developing Natural Death Care
Lee Webster shared her considerable knowledge about developing natural death care - what works, what doesn't and how we can encourage communities to have the skill to care for their people.
Lee Webster is an internationally recognized public speaker on funeral reform, including home funerals and green burial. She has founded and served in top nonprofit leadership positions, including the Green Burial Council, Conservation Burial Alliance, National Home Funeral Alliance, National End-of-Life Doula Alliance, and is the director of New Hampshire Funeral Resources & Education and co-creator of the Funeral.org Partnership. She is the author of several home funeral and green burial articles and books, including The After-Death Care Educator Handbook, Changing Landscapes: Exploring the growth of ethical, compassionate and environmentally sustainable green funeral service, and contributions to The Future of the Corpse: Our Changing Ecologies of Death and Disposition.
This event took place on Sunday 11 June 2023.
NDAN Members Networking Meet-Up
This online event was held on Thursday 6- April, 2023.
Technologies of the Human Corpse
Death and the dead body have never been more alive in the public imagination—not least because of current debates over modern medical technology that is deployed, it seems, expressly to keep human bodies from dying, blurring the boundary between alive and dead. Come hear from John as he shares his wisdom and insight examining the relationship of the dead body with technology, both material and conceptual: the physical machines, political concepts, and sovereign institutions that humans use to classify, organize, repurpose, and transform the human corpse. John is a leading expert in this space and challenges people to think about death, dying, and dead bodies in radically different ways.
Dr. John Troyer is the Director of the Centre for Death and Society at the University of Bath. He is a co-founder of the Death Reference Desk website, the Future Cemetery Project and a frequent commentator for the BBC. He grew up in the American Funeral industry.
This event was hosted on Sunday 2 April 2023.
NDAN Networking Meet-Up - Planning for a New Year
This online event was held on Friday 3-February, 2023.
Revisiting Resomation
Come hear from Sandy Sullivan (Edinburgh, Scotland) as we dive into the process of alkaline hydrolysis and hear about the latest developments in Australia and New Zealand. We will also welcome Debbie Richards from Water Cremation Aotearoa (Christchurch, NZ), who is actively working to introduce AH to her local community.
This event was hosted on Saturday 11th February 2023.
NDAN Networking Meet-Up: Holiday wind down!
This online event was held on Friday 16-December 2022.
NDAN'S Home Death Care
Join experts Libby Moloney, Claire Turnham and Rebecca Lyons as they deconstruct and discuss home death care.
Learn about how it works, what it looks like and have the opportunity to ask all the questions you've always wanted answers to!
This event was hosted on Saturday 3 December 2022.
NDAN Network Gathering
Our first in-person event since the global pandemic was held Melbourne Australia. It was a chance to share ideas, gain inspiration and plan our next move together! The day was filled with presentations from leaders in the field of natural death and burial, plenty of space for discussions, and a catered lunch!
This event was hosted on Sunday 30-October 2022
NDAN Networking Meet-Up: Being a natural death advocate
This online event was held on Friday 7-October 2022.
NDAN - Radical approaches to cremated remains
The team at To The Roots are rebels and change-makers in their community. What they do has been so popular that they have set up in various places now and the demand for their service is growing. Hayley Bangham is a potter residing with my family in the beautiful small town of Dunsborough, Western Australia. She is the founder, creator and sole operative of Conscious Clay. She produces a custom design range of high fired ceramics, glazed with the cremated ashes of the dead, humans and pets alike.
This event was hosted on Friday 2-September 2022.
NDAN Networking Meet-Up: Member Updates: Where are you at and what are you up to.
This online event was held on Friday 5-August 2022.
Natural Burial in the UK
For years the UK have been leaders in natural burial and this is a unique opportunity to hear from experts - people who have been doing it for years. Our guest speakers for this event are: Ken West spent 45 years working in cemeteries & crematoria covering over 100,000 funerals; Anthony and Ele Waters run the Pentiddy Community Woodland (Charity) and Pentiddy Natural Burial; Claire Turnham is the Founder of Only with Love and Chair of the UK Home Funeral Network.
This event was hosted on Saturday 25-June 2022.
NDAN Networking Meet-Up: Being present with dying
This online event was held on Friday 3-June 2022.
NDAN Networking Meet-Up: Planning a natural end
This online event was held on Friday 1-April 2022.
NDAN Info Session - Parting Stone
At this event we took a look at a brand new form of Human Remains called 'Solidified Remains'. Creator and founder of Parting Stone, Justin Crowe, joined the event to take us through what this is, how it works and why people are choosing Parting Stone for the ashes of their dead.
This event was hosted on Saturday 5 March 2022.
NDAN Networking Meet-Up: Doing death work
This online event was held on Friday 4-February 2022.
Dealing with Ashes
Our guests Bob Jenkins, founder of 'Let Your Love Grow' & Warren Roberts, founder of 'Living Legacy Forest' joined us for an open discussion on cremated remains and returning them to nature. Bob and Warren shared their work and how they are addressing the issues caused by ashes in our environment. As cremation rates rise in the west, this an increasingly important topic!
This event was hosted on Saturday 4 December 2021.
NDAN - Conservation Burial
Our guests Kimberley and Billy Campbell MD, from Memorial Ecosystems, based in South Carolina, USA discuss Conservation Burial. Memorial Ecosystems seek to assist in the development of multi-functional memorial nature preserves. Through becoming members of the preserve during life, and choosing burial in the preserve after, clients leave a permanent legacy for their families, their communities, and the natural world.
This event was hosted on Saturday 9-October 2021
Crestone End of Life Project
This event allowed attendees to hear from Stephanie Gaines, Paul Kloppenburg and Gussie Fauntleroy, as they shared the foundational inspiration, structure and services of the Crestone End of Life Project (CEOLP). Crestone is a remarkable community who look after their friends and neighbours in death as they do in life.
This event was hosted on Saturday 14-August 2021
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