IT'S not a heavy metal band and it’s not where goths hang out, so what is a death café and where can you find one?

Death cafes are a place for people to openly discuss death over tea and cake. Organisers say they hope to increase awareness of death and help people make the most of their lives.

One of those organisers is Rebecca Lacey, who has brought death cafes to South Wales.

“We live in a death-phobic culture and research shows that the more we attend to it, the more we explore our experiences, the more alive we feel just being alive,” she said.

The idea for death cafes came from Café Mortels, which sociologist and anthropologist Bernard Crettaz created in 2004.

He organised and hosted open conversations around death in Switzerland. The format caught on and death cafes have been held in 26 countries since then.

The small social experiment became a global phenomenon. It first came to the UK when Jon Underwood held one from his living room in Hackney, East London in 2011. Mr Underwood's wife Susan Barksy Reid took over the café after his death in 2017.

Ms Lacey’s death café opened on Friday, January 12, at Market Tavern in Monmouth. She says she plans to run it once every other month for now. If interest grows the café may open for longer or more frequently.

The Monmouth Death Café first opened in 2020 but did not run during the pandemic. 

Lacey said: “There’s no agenda to the café or objectives. Everyone has something to bring or not. You can be silent if you like and just eat cake.”

Death café organisers call the phenomenon a ‘social franchise’ and encourage people to set up their own cafes all over the world.

According to the official website, they can be held anywhere from living rooms to community centres. Some have even been held in funeral homes.

They cost nothing to attend and are run on a not-for-profit basis by volunteers. The website states the cafes don’t have any intentions to lead people’s way of thinking. They just try to create an accessible, respectful, and confidential space to talk about death.

“People can drop in for as long or short a time as feels right,” Ms Lacey said.