Celebrant Conference 2022 workshops

Suitable for wedding and naming celebrants, this workshop will be a practical session, so please bring with you some of your own practice aids and materials and be willing to share. We will be workshopping and focusing on bringing out the best of what you have to offer your couples or parents, while meeting their needs and requirements, and encouraging them to share their best stories. The session will also look: at what to cover in the initial video call/pre-booking meeting; what to cover in the main planning meeting; using written questionnaires if necessary or exploring alternatives, so you can nurture your relationship from booking to ceremony.

Zena is a wedding, naming and funeral celebrant, ceremonies mentor, and former Chair of the Ceremonies Board. In 2021 she led and coordinated the celebrant network’s contribution to The Little Book of Humanist Weddings, and is performing the role again for the forthcoming Little Book of Humanist Funerals.

Jeannette Littlemore is a professor of English and Applied Linguistics at the University of Birmingham, and Sarah Turner is an assistant professor in English at Coventry University. We are working on a project funded by the True Colours Trust. Through this project, we have been interviewing parents and carers who have lost a child, with a particular focus on the communication they had with various professional groups following the death of their child. The aim of the project is to provide insights into the nature of this experience, and consider ways in which professional groups who offer support following such a bereavement may best care for and communicate with the bereaved.

In this workshop, we will be sharing some of our findings and discussing ways in which celebrants can communicate effectively with parents following the death of their child. We will invite you to reflect on the experience of child death and to consider your important role as a celebrant in helping bereaved parents and carers to manage their grief. We hope that by the end of this workshop, you will have:

• Gained a clearer understanding of how the death of a child is experienced by parents and carers.
• Considered the role played by celebrants in helping parents and carers to manage their grief.
• Explored ways to provide empathetic and supportive communication, which reflect the unique challenges presented by the death of a child.

People living with dementia are often excluded from situations because other people think they will not understand and may get upset. This adds to their isolation and we miss out on their unique contributions.

This will be an active session of sharing experiences and learning about the impact of dementia on people. It will include practical tips on how to better include people. Come with thoughts and questions, and we will all learn something.

Alison has worked in social care for 40 years and has delivered dementia awareness training for care staff and advocates. She has been a funeral celebrant for just over a year and has found listening and trying to empathise essential in all roles.

This workshop will explore ways of working with emotions as part of the celebrant’s role. Drawing on pastoral care skills to support clients, and existential themes to frame the client’s wishes, the aim is to share experiences of developing celebrancy practice from a philosophical perspective.

Elizabeth Young is a funeral, wedding, and namings celebrant, pastoral care volunteer, and Course Leader for the MA in Existential and Humanist Pastoral Care at the New School of Psychotherapy and Counselling.

Learn about how your vocal chords work, how to look after them, and use them to their best. We’ll cover voice care, warm-up exercises, articulation, and tongue-twisters, in this fun, interactive workshop.

Josie is a Humanist Ceremonies wedding celebrant and Speech and Language Therapist, based in Bath.

This session will look at the key principles that support creativity. We’ll explore how you can weave such creativity into your wedding ceremonies, and consider the outcome of going deep, being present, and letting go.

Martin Alexander-Drake is a wedding celebrant based in Bristol and covering the South West. He brands his humanist celebrant service ‘MAD Ceremonies’, to reflect his passion for crafting weddings that celebrate love and marriage in technicolour!

Are you a social media novice, but ready to start creating your presence online? Then this session is for you. We’ll talk about the best platforms for you to be on, sourcing and sharing content, and making that content go further. No prior social media knowledge required.

Becky Morris-Knight is a freelance digital marketer, and Humanist Ceremonies’ social media content creator.

In this workshop, Pippa will share some of her experiences as a celebrant in co-creating unique and inclusive memorial ceremonies with children, young adults and their families. There will be an opportunity for participants to share their own experiences and to draw together principles and practical ideas for participants to take away.

Pippa Pal is a Humanists UK accredited funeral celebrant. She also worked as an educational psychologist for many years which included supporting school staff when they and their pupils were experiencing bereavement and loss.

Have you come across a poetry or prose reading, from any source, that you feel would be appropriate for a civic event, such as a commemorative or Remembrance Day ceremony? Celebrants of all types are invited to bring to this workshop a single reading that could be used for such a ceremony, and help build a library of resources for humanist civic speakers. After the conference, all workshop attendees will be given the full set of readings brought to the session, in exchange for having shared their own.

The workshop will take the form of small group discussions between celebrants. Faciliated by Ginny Collins, Ceremonies Training and Development Manager, and Paul Kaufman, humanist civic speaker, Chair of East London Humanists, and former chaplain to the Mayor of Redbridge, London.

Trevor Moore, Chair of My Death, My Decision, will bring you up to date on the campaign for assisted dying – what’s happening worldwide and where things stand for England and Wales. He’ll also pick your brains on suggested safeguards we might adopt in any legislation.

Sue will share her recent experience of accompanying someone to Switzerland for an assisted death, and the unexpected outcome she underwent – serving to show how broken our current laws are.

If we’re going to have assisted dying, we need to encourage people to talk about death during life. Having both led deathcafes in the past, Sue and Trevor will take a look at the phenomenon and encourage conversation in small groups.

This workshop will explore the nature of compassion both within the pastoral support dimension of funeral celebrancy, and as a vital element of caring for ourselves.

Prior to his official ‘retirement’ in March 2018 as Director of Hillingdon Mind, Christopher was employed for 37 years in various forms of health, social care, and community development work. He is a funeral celebrant, member of the Non-Religious Pastoral Support network, and active member of LGBT Humanists.

Coaching and mentoring – what’s the difference? And is it important? How is the role of Humanist Ceremonies mentors different to that of the trainers? And what’s the connection between John Lennon and Timmy Mallet?

This presentation and interactive workshop explores the differences and provides practical advice for both mentors and mentees within Humanist Ceremonies.

Simon is a funeral and naming celebrant with Humanist Ceremonies. Prior to that he worked for IBM UK for over 30 years in a variety of technical sales roles, including education and mentoring. He is a first-level running and fencing coach with extensive experience of coaching young children, students, and adults.

• You should already be very familiar with the app and what it can do, so we can dive straight in at an advanced level.
• Please bring your mobiles or similar devices to be able to tour Instagram during the session.
• Be prepared to take an active role!

Natalie is a wedding celebrant and Humanist Ceremonies mentor based in South West London.

Join Ewan for 50 minutes of symbolism and gesture! We’ll think about the actions we can use, but more importantly why they are meaningful. Who are they for? The person undertaking them? The people witnessing? Does that make a difference? Why do we need to do a thing, rather than just say some stuff? Let’s think it all through, and also share some ideas that we can each proudly nick from each other.

His hope is that you’ll come away (a) as fascinated by the whole notion of rites of passage as he is, and (b) with a few new tricks up your sleeve.

This conference almost exactly marks Ewan’s ten-year anniversary as a celebrant, doing funerals and namings, but mostly weddings. He lives in York and, outside celebrancy, has worked mostly with charities and tech/design stuff. He’s a trustee of Humanists UK, but is now ready to admit that he also spent 11 years telling ghost stories to tourists.

A discussion about the benefits and pitfalls of using technology to prepare and present ceremonies.

Phil Walder is a wedding, namings, and funeral celebrant, and Humanist Ceremonies mentor. He has worked in emerging technologies from desktop publishing to video streaming, for many years and wants to hear about all of your experiences, good and bad. A chance to discuss and discover with other celebrants.