Opening Ceremony Podcast
Opening Ceremony with Jess May is a podcast focuses on ceremonies and how they tell our human stories!
Jess May is an Award Winning Celebrant who chats with amazing human beings about their life events, passions and careers and the ceremonies associated with them.
By focusing on ceremony throughout history, in different times, cultures and places we learn about the multitude of human lives and voices and how we are both different and interconnected.
Ceremonies remind us of what it means to be human and that is what makes them fascinating. Join Jess and her fantastic community to learn more about why they matter and how they are changing over time.
Opening Ceremony Podcast
Coffin Club UK with Kate & Kate Celebrants
Warning...your life may never be the same again!
Meet Kate & Kate, Comediennes of the Funeral scene, all round good eggs, founders of Coffin Club UK, a Funeral Training Programme for would be Funeral Revolutionaries, and full time Celebrants for fabulous people everywhere.
Here we talk 'gatekeeping' Funeral Directors, the impact of sexism on the lives of Celebrants and put the Celebrant world to rights.
I love them, and once they're in your life you'll never let them go! Here's Kate Dyer and Kate Tym in their own words:
Hi, we’re the Coffin Club Kates!
Kate Tym (Blonde Kate) and Kate Dyer (Red-head Kate). We first met when we worked as Registrars for our local council. We jumped ship to become wedding celebrants and, after a short time, decided to train to conduct funerals – and so Kate and Kate Celebrants was born.
It didn’t take much time for us to become aware of how formulaic funerals tend to be and were so frustrated with the lack of choice and creativity being offered. Not only that, but we were amazed how little people knew about what was available to them for their final fling and how there seemed to be a reluctance from many in the funeral industry to make this information readily available.
Not ones to see a problem and not set about fixing it, our mission became to communicate and educate and bring the tricky topic of funerals out in the open. We started with a Coffin Club in our own area of Hastings on England’s south coast, before teaching other people to set up Coffin Clubs in their communities.
We started training other celebrants as we really see funeral celebrants as being key players in helping to change the face of funerals. We worked with other death professionals and, most importantly, brought our message to the general public by creating a uniquely informative plan-your-own funeral course.
We’d found our calling! People loved our approach and we’re really thrilled and grateful to have had our passion recognised with a trophy cabinet full of awards. We’re absolutely convinced that bringing death back to life is vital for better outcomes around grief recovery and resilience and, we couldn’t agree more with our inimitable patron, Miriam Margolyes, when she says, ‘Everyone who is going to die should come to Coffin Club.
Viva la Coffin Club revolution!!
Find them here: https://coffinclub.co.uk/