Shape your weekend to your own needs and interests.

Choose four workshops from our carefully curated list of 16, delivered by experienced Humanist Ceremonies celebrants, external trainers, Humanists UK staff, or academics.

‘Some very stimulating and nourishing sessions. Particularly those which allowed us to share experiences not just as celebrants but about our lives. All this feeds into our practice and helps us with our own personal development.‘

Celebrant Conference 2023 attendee

Deborah Alma

Deborah Alma is a UK poet, editor, and bookseller. She has worked using poetry with people with dementia, in hospice care, with women’s groups and with children in schools and lectured at both Worcester and Keele universities. From 2012 she was the Emergency Poet, offering poetry on prescription from her vintage ambulance. She co-founded the world’s first walk-in Poetry Pharmacy in Shropshire with her partner, the poet James Sheard, in 2019, which now has a second branch inside Lush Spa on Oxford Street.

She is editor of Emergency Poet, an anti-stress poetry anthology, The Everyday Poet, #MeToo: rallying against sexual harassment – a women’s poetry anthology – Ten Poems of Happiness, and These Are the Hands: Poems from the Heart of the NHS, co-edited with Dr Katie Amiel. She is the editor of The National Trust Book of Nature Poems, published April 2023. Her first full collection, Dirty Laundry, is published by Nine Arches Press.

Cas Bradbeer

Cas Bradbeer is Heritage Project Officer at Humanists UK, currently working on the National Lottery Heritage Fund supported project Humanist Heritage: Doers, Dreamers, Place Makers, for which they have produced several talks and workshops. Most recently, they organised an exhibition and fair of LGBT humanist heritage and contemporary art at Conway Hall, which included a zine they created through a workshop with Humanist Heritage volunteers.

Cas also works at Strawberry Hill House & Garden as Curatorial Assistant, as well as volunteering as an LGBTQIA+ tour guide for the Victoria & Albert Museum and as a Community Curator for the Museum of Transology. Their educational background is in art history, and they have presented lectures on their research at the likes of the Royal College of Art and the National Gallery of Ireland.

Ann-Michelle Burton

Ann-Michelle joined Humanists UK in 2022 as Head of People. Ann-Michelle’s role is to lead on all aspects related to our people’s experience of working or volunteering with us. She oversees our people strategy and associated activities, including staff and volunteer engagement, recruitment, leadership, learning and development, and our people brand. She works alongside our Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) Action Group to promote EDI across the workforce. As Head of People, she also oversees HR for the staff team.

Victoria Denning

Victoria Denning has been accredited celebrant for weddings, namings, and funerals with Humanists UK for 17 years. She has worked in Birmingham, Shropshire, and now lives in Worcestershire. She retired after 34 years of being a primary school teacher, working up the ladder to Acting Head Teacher in Birmingham. She is a mother, grandmother, and great aunt, an organic gardener, traveller, festival-goer, artist, qualified children’s meditation teacher and an avid Argentinian Tango dancer. Victoria is also a qualified celebrant’s mentor and accreditor.

Leilia Dore

Leilia Dore is the Celebrant Network Manager for Humanist Ceremonies, as well as a wedding and funeral celebrant based in Bristol. Prior to joining Humanists UK, Leilia worked for the World Health Organization and UNICEF on public health emergencies including COVID-19, polio, malaria, monkeypox, and cholera, and lived in Switzerland, Kenya, and Rwanda. When she isn’t writing ceremonies, you can usually find her swimming in a body of cold water, singing Georgian polyphony or going on adventures in her tiny campervan.

Fiona Egan

Fiona Egan is a qualitative insight consultant with more than 20 years of experience working in marketing and advertising. She asks the big questions and gathers human stories for global brands. She has been a wedding and naming celebrant since 2020, working in London and the South East region.

Lynne Featherstone
Baroness Featherstone

Lynne entered the House of Lords in 2015. Previously MP for Hornsey & Wood Green, she was a Minister for all five years of the Coalition Government. During her time at the Home Office where she was also Equalities Minister, she was the originator and architect of the Same Sex Marriage law. Lynne is a liberal, first, last and always!

Jessica Ferrow

Jessica Ferrow is a mother to a young daughter, and is living with curiosity through the seismic shift of matrescence – the physical, emotional and social transition of becoming a mother. She is a certified MotherCircle facilitator, having trained with Kimberly Ann Johnson, one of the leading voices in post-partum care. Jessica runs MotherCircle Bristol, which offers women’s circles for mothers, supporting them to process and integrate their journey through motherhood in community.

Rachel Fowler

Rachel Fowler is a storyteller. Whether as an actor, director, writer, or coach, she celebrates human stories, and the power they have to heal, reveal hidden truths, and to transform. She is passionate about making the world more grief literate and more compassionate, both towards ourselves and each other. She’s a founding member of Table 11, a community for folks in their 20s, 30s, and 40s in the UK who have lost a close loved one.

Madeleine Goodall

Madeleine is the Humanist Heritage Coordinator for Humanists UK, researching and writing about the history of humanism to celebrate the organisation’s 125th birthday. She has a background in education, museums, and community history, and is also Humanists UK’s Wikimedian in Residence. She currently leads on a two-year National Lottery Heritage Fund project – Humanist Heritage: doers, dreamers, place makers – which focuses on the remarkable freethinkers and activists who changed the world, and the communities they built around them.

Felicity Harvest

After many years working in the arts, Felicity Harvest trained as a Humanists UK celebrant in 2011. She does all three ceremony types, and is a trainer, accreditation observer, and mentor. She and her husband had their own renewal of vows after ten years of marriage, and might do it again after 25 – just for the hell of it.

Claire Hobson

Claire is one of Table 11’s Co-Founders and is the Content Director for Table 11. She lost her amazing Mum, Penny, to a brain tumour (Glioblastoma) in 2017, after a long battle spanning eight years. Five weeks later, Claire gave birth to her second son (a month earlier than expected). The turmoil of dealing with the grief of losing a parent at such a young age while navigating a new baby and a toddler left Claire feeling alone and isolated. Most recently, Claire lost her wonderful Father, Kevin, to squamous cell carcinoma in May 2024 after a gruelling battle with the cancer, leaving her an ‘orphan’ at 41 years old and breaking her heart even more. By being part of Table 11, Claire hopes to help others who feel lost and alone on the grief journey. Outside of Table 11 and being a mum, dog mum, and wife, Claire is a Lecturer in Marketing at University of Surrey, plus she loves to run – anywhere up to Ultra Marathon distances and is training for her first Ironman!

Linda Hollie

Linda Hollie is a Yorkshire-based Humanists UK wedding celebrant and has been writing and delivering ceremonies for the past five years. When she’s not sharing couples’ stories, Linda specialises in Career Development Learning within higher education and is a freelance workshop facilitator in all things personal and professional development. In her spare time, you can usually find her paddling about on a river, out and about in the northern hills, or spending far too much time on Pinterest as she plans her next house renovation.

Deborah Hooper

Deborah leads Humanist Ceremonies, and oversees the training and developing Humanists UK’s network of more than 560 accredited celebrants for funerals, weddings, and naming ceremonies. She also makes sure that more and more people are aware of their choice for an inclusive, personal, and meaningful non-religious ceremony at the most significant moments of their lives.

Her background is in brand marketing and business development. Originally a retail buyer, she spent much of her career in publishing, intellectual property management, licensing, and children’s entertainment at Penguin Books, BBC Worldwide, and other international media companies, including in-house, as management, and as a consultant.

She is also herself an accredited humanist celebrant for funerals, weddings, and naming ceremonies. As a French speaker, she specialises in heartfelt and authentic bilingual ceremonies.

Katie Isles

Katie is a West Midlands-based wedding celebrant, model, and midlife content creator. A born and bred Brummie who should have been born by the Med! She has a passion for music and good food and is an embracer of change. After working in business (mainly marketing) and language teaching (mainly Spanish) for over 15 years, at the age of 40, she kicked it all in for a life in front of the camera as a model and presenter. When Covid hit, her regular work disappeared and so she pivoted to focus on her Instagram community of wonderful and positive midlife women… until she came up with a plan to add another string to her bow and become a Humanist UK wedding celebrant in 2023.

Emma Kimber

Emma lives on the south-west coast in Dorset, has been a wedding celebrant since 2011, and has conducted over 120 weddings. She was also a funeral celebrant for four years, but decided to concentrate on weddings and so joined the celebrant training team in 2023. She is also a mentor and accreditor. Having originally gained a degree in French and Spanish in the 1990s, her ‘USP’ is incorporating different languages for bilingual weddings. Her career in London included working for a major advertising agency, and then going freelance in the music and corporate event industries.

Antonia Mäurer

Antonia Mäurer is Public Affairs and Campaigns Officer at Humanists UK.

Ruth Silverstone

Ruth Silverstone has a diverse background, from acting, to adult education, and disability support. She trained to conduct funerals in 2017 and has become increasingly passionate about working with bereaved individuals. She volunteers as a pastoral support worker at her local hospice along with her therapy dog Winston, and is currently working towards her MA in Counselling and Psychotherapy, which she feels is a perfect complement to her work as a funeral celebrant.

Jon Trevor

Jon Trevor has been a Humanists UK celebrant since 2009. He has also been heavily involved in the Birmingham improv scene for roughly the same length of time. Jon is the founder/director of Birmingham Improv, which runs classes, workshops, drop-ins, jams, and shows. He performs with two improv groups, Box of Frogs, and with Breakfast of Champions. He is the founder/director of the Birmingham Improv Festival. He also takes the skillset of improvisation into the corporate world under the banner of Improv Initiative. All that, and funerals, weddings, and namings too!

Andrew West

Andrew is Director of IT at Humanists UK, and has been with the organisation for 13 years as the minor Andrew. He runs a team of three, and is responsible for the systems which keep Humanists UK running: our contact database, the central Humanists UK website and its many spinoffs, systems to manage our celebrant network, the physical computer network, and generally anything that beeps. He is also the organisation’s default photographer.

Outside the office he is a private pilot and ballroom dancer. He also represented Humanists UK on the Fourth Plinth.

Elizabeth Young

Dr Elizabeth Young is the Course Leader for the ‘Pastoral Care: Existential and Humanist Practice’ programmes at the New School of Psychotherapy and Counselling. She is also a practising humanist chaplain in an acute NHS Trust, and the Spiritual Care Development Adviser for a hospice. Prior to this, she worked in the voluntary sector, latterly as Director for Strategic Development at Home-Start UK, and also in the NHS and academia. Her professional background is in nursing and medical sociology, and she has an interest in researching sensitive topics, including aspects of facing mortality.