The Community Death Educators Course is a deep dive for the committed. 12 weeks, twice a week online, and you really do need to attend at least 16 of the 24 sessions and catch up the ones you miss.

Exploring the dynamics of community, of circles, of groups, of codependency and people pleasing, boundaries, contracts, light-touch ceremony and core facilitation skills we work together as a group to take the "off the peg" materials and adapt them to our own lives and work. 

This course prepares you to stand up and be seen as active in your Community willing and able to talk openly about Death, Dying and Grief. It positions you as a central hub for all things Death in your local area and connects you to others doing the Work. You cannot be all things to all people but you CAN network and broker in ways that deepen community bonds and cohesion, create safer spaces for exploring Big Topics and contribute to the building of sustainable Peace and co-operation. 

The Community Death Educators course follows a 12 week pattern, with a week break after every 4th week and then we will meet in person in North Wales in September. You will need to budget for accommodation in Wales, local camping, glamping, B&B, bunkhouse and hotels available to suit every budget. We encourage you to connect with the others attending to see if you can car pool and share costs. The venue for the in-person Gathering is the Barn at Moelyci farm, the farm is community owned and run with farm shop, cafe, donkey sanctuary, community allotments, woodland walks and the Barn which is an events space. So it is the perfect place for our gathering. 

The 12 weeks follows the same pattern each week. The Monday session will cover Skills and Competencies required and the Thursday session will cover a Workshop topic. There are 12 workshops pre-prepared and planned for you; as a group we delve deeper into how to create some magic, light-touch ceremony and beauty by co-imagining these events. 

There is a workbook and you can order it online for £20 print on demand or we can send you the PDF (will be sent once you sign up). The workbook contains all the resources you need to establish Grassroots Community Death Education in your local area. 

Monday sessions are 10 – 12noon UK time and Thursdays 7-9pm UK time on Zoom.


1^st June “Holding an Open Group”

4^th June “Advanced Planning Workshop”

8^th June “Power of Symbolism”

11^th June “Funeral Poverty and Planning Workshop”

15^th June “ Safeguarding and Risk Assessments”

18^th June “Care of the Dead Workshop”

22^nd June “Options and Local Services”

25^th June “Intergenerational Story Sharing Workshop”

Week Off

6^th July ”Exploratory Discussion”

9^th July “Local History and Ancestry Workshop”

13^th July “Holding Safe Space and Cultural Competency”

16^th July “Ancestors and the Near Distance Dead Workshop”

20^th July “Publicity and Planning”

23^rd July “Crafts for Memorialisation Workshop”

27^th July “Time, Needs and Control”

30^th July  “Making Vigils Workshop”

Week Off

10^th Aug “Self Care, Boundaries and Limits”

13^th Aug “Nature Walk and Cairn Building Workshop”

17^th Aug “Contracting and Group Agreements”

20^th Aug “Deep Listening Workshop”

24^th Aug “Meeting Dissent, Conflict and Discriminatory Behaviour”

27^th Aug “Somatic Awareness Workshop”

1^st Sept “Nurturing Agency”

(*NB Important day and time change due to bank holiday – TUES 2 – 4pm)

3^rd Sept “Self Care Workshop”

IN PERSON Gathering at Moelyci Barn, 5^th and 6^th September 2026 includes a real life Death Café and Grief Circle with the local community

In order to keep the cost of the course as low as possible we made some decisions including putting the workbook on a Print on Demand website for you to purchase yourself; we can also send you the PDF of the workbook but to print it off would cost more than using the Print on Demand service. For £20 you can get a beautiful colour copy of the Workbook which contains all the workshop plans and notes for the course. We work through it together as a group and your notes from the course will help you to adapt the Off the Peg workshop plans into something relevant and applicable to your local communities. 

The calls are recorded and will be shared with you in Audio form as it is extremely rare that you would need to watch the sessions. If you would like to receive the sessions in Video form please notify us before the start of the course and we will be able to support that request. 

As participants you need to know that the calls are recorded and knowing this your participation is a sign of consent. The recordings are stored securely, uploaded to a secure website and only those with access, ie the group itself, will have access to the recordings. 

Before we start the course a group agreement will be sent to everyone which outlines a basic contract between us of how we will be and treat each other; you are encouraged to engage with the consent process around the group agreement fully so you are aware of how to get your needs best met and what the expectations of you are; confidentiality, mutual respect, maturity, self responsibility, self care and attendance.

The materials of the course are specifically designed to be "incomplete", what that means is that the workbook alone is not the material for the course - active engagement with the materials preparing for the upcoming session, participation in the sessions and the contents of the sessions are what will flesh out the skeleton of the Workbook and make it come alive.

We find it exciting and a little edgy to be so explicit in the expectation that you will fully engage with the course materials and yet when we ran the course for the first time in 2025 this was what shone through; that it was how the group itself engaged with and breathed life into the material that provided the GOLD from which we all learned a lot.

Your facilitator will be Alexandra Derwen (they/them), lead facilitator of the Death Doula courses and the Death and Dying aspects of Sacred Circle Training Co CIC which they founded. A super seasoned group facilitator with a professional background in Youthwork and Community Development as well as 30 years a death doula and 16 years a funeral celebrant, Alexandra will guide you through as a group. That said, as ever, our approach to learning is non-hierarchical and democratic; so while Alexandra is the experienced guide ALL your life experience and contributions are deeply welcome. We learn from each other.