INFORMATION VIDEOS
The Australian Home Funeral Alliance host information session on various topics to help inform and educate anyone interested in planning or hosting a Home Funeral.
These sessions are recorded and are available for viewing by clicking on the topic which interests you.
Any information provided is general in nature and is not intended as advice or instructions.
What is a Home Funeral?
ABOUT: In this recorded event, Claire Turnham and Bec Lyons share what a home funeral is and how it all works.
Arranging a Home Funeral
ABOUT: AHFA Committee Members Alex Antunes and Hini Hanara delve into how to arrange a home funeral. What does it involve and where do you start?​
After Death Body Care in the Home
ABOUT: Hallie Halloran is of Ngemba - First Nations, Irish & Belgian bloodlines explores after death body care in the home. People talk about home funeral, but what does it take to care for the dead? ​
Body Disposal Options
ABOUT: Bec Lyons is a Celebrant, Tedx speaker, end of life doula, independent funeral director has travelled the world looking at different body disposal options. During this event, Bec presented an overview of her research and findings.
What do I say?
ABOUT: Do you know what to say when someone is dying, or to someone recently bereaved? AHFA committee member Annie Whitlocke has years of experience to share on this topic.
Ceremony Really Matters
ABOUT : AHFA Committee member Zenith Virago shared her decades of wisdom about creating meaningful ceremony. With a legal and community background and work history, she is a seen as a community resource, assisting people to know and reclaim their legal rights, and co-create their own social rites of passage.
Creating Rituals of Dress and Death
ABOUT : Dr. Pia Interlandi is a designer who addresses death through dress; dress as an act, as a doing, and as a becoming (poiesis). Harnessing a toolkit of skills that combine tacit and explicit knowledge bases, Pia intermeshes scholarly and professional practice, interlacing personal reflection, community engagement, and the rigor(mortis) of academia.
A Doula's Support in Dying
ABOUT : At this event, facilitate by Tracey Rusden, we explored the role of an End of Life Doula, sometimes referred to as EOLD.
Reflections of My Queer Birth/Death Ritual
ABOUT: In this recording, Alex Antunes shared photos and personal experiences of attempting to metaphorically dead while she reflects on the birth/death ritual she hosted - a queer death experiment.
Building Grief Literacy: Theory, Practice and Partnerships
ABOUT: This session, with the help of Jo McIlveen, will unpacked the myths of griefs and include an overview of current bereavement theory. We explore what’s happening across the community to increase our grief literacy and how hospitals and funeral organisations can partner to provide wrap around bereavement care to clients and families.
Choosing a Home Funeral; Things You May Want to Consider
ABOUT: Drawing from over 30 years of experience helping people do this, Zenith will step you through some of the fundamental things to consider when organising a Home Funeral. This session is aimed to expand your understanding of possible home funeral options.
Community Capacity and Death
ABOUT: Drawing from rich personal experiences Bec Lyons & Kaz Zabiegala discuss community approaches to end of life and after death care. They talk through some of the deaths they have been a part of and in particular how Kaz’s husband Stan helped an entire community become death literate.
Ways of Being with a Family When a Person is Dying
ABOUT: Annie Whitlocke shares her own experiences and having learned the hard way, what to avoid. How to take long distance separation, age, technology and disabilities into consideration during this period.
2024 Dying To Know Day Event
ABOUT: Living Wakes are becoming more popular with Australians and people start to rethink funerals, celebrations, memorials. In this special Dying to Know Day event, Annie Whitlocke and Edwin Quilliam will share their personal stories, reflections and experiences with living wakes and share when they meant and how they worked.​
Lessons Learned: The Evolution of Home Funerals across Continents
ABOUT: Claire Turnham and Lee Webster will offer honest, candid conversations about home funerals and the ways in which we can build community knowledge and practice in Australia, during on how the UK and USA have been leading the way so far.
Decolonising Deathcare Through Home Funerals
ABOUT: Decolonisation is a guiding principle that guides Hini Harara's practice as a celebrant and death educator. In this talk, Hini shared how Indigenous knowledge informs their drive for community, connection to place and desire to normalise emotions at funerals and death spaces.
Exploring the Masculine Response to Death and Grief
ABOUT: This recording, with The Mourning After Podcast Host, Ben Gibson, includes practical tools, tips, and techniques to support men both in dealing with end-of-life situations and in their after-death integration back into life.
The Role of Embalming in Home Death Care
ABOUT: Amy Sagar, Tender Funerals Illawarra funeral director, discusses the process and role of embalming in home death care, including when it is and isn't necessary and environmentally friendly alternatives to body care.
The Bioscope as a Cartographic Tool to Facilitate Conversations about Death
ABOUT: Chetan Shastri's research and creative practice are situated at the intersection of design and death. During this presentation he will share the story of the Bioscope. Chetan's research and creative practice in Australia developed the Bioscope as a cartography of death and tool to facilitate conversations about end-of-life. Read more
Creativity and Funeral Rites; The Use of Creative Arts during Wakes, Funerals & Memorials
ABOUT: This presentation, with Joh Fairley, aka Joh Nyx, discusses the use of creative practices to honour those who have died/what we have lost, through funerals, memorials and events. We explore secular ritual, its use in modern Australian Funerals and ways to expand, personalise and deepen meaning-making through creativity.
Grief and Creative Practice
ABOUT: In this video, Chloe Coelho will be discuss creative practice in grief spaces, past and emerging, inclusive of her current studies around memorialisation.
THE GOOD, THE VAD & THE UGLY
ABOUT: There still remain many grey areas around Voluntary Assisted Dying. In this event facilitated by Annie Whitlocke, Tracey Rusden & Mary-Kate Pickett, through their combined stories we hope to highlight how things can be made smoother, what to avoid and how to engage and include our people.
Technology Supports for Community Care
ABOUT: This event featured: Simon Lowe from The Ageing Revolution, Colin Pudsey from SilVR, Holly Smith from Public Health Palliative Care Unit and Catherine Ashton from Critical Info, as they talk through the different technology-based supports and emerging options for aged and end-of-life care in Australia.
Skeletons in the Closet: The Ossuaries of Europe
ABOUT: This talk, hosted by Cat Irving, extensively illustrated with the author’s own photos, takes you on a journey across Europe that will encompass painted skulls and bejewelled skeletons, bone chandeliers and the six million people who lie beneath the streets of Paris.
GENOCIDE – A survivors perspective
ABOUT: Now living in Australia and raising a family, Faina Iligoga, a survivor of the Rwandan Genocide in 1995, is called to ask, what now? How do a generation of hurt people heal; how do they embrace truth telling and support each other to hold their stories and share their experiences? What can they learn from the genocide?​
Navigating the politics of death, dying, and end-of-life care
ABOUT: This talk, with Allan Kellehear OBE, describes the organisational politics and the politics of change-making between death care and healthcare sectors - the tensions between theory, policy, and practice; between professionals and communities; between intersectionality and generational changes; and between reform and radicalism.
​Integrating Palliative Care into Oncology
ABOUT: Drawing on the safari concept, an African framework for end-of-life care, the session, with Dr Christian Ntizimira, examined how suffering is understood, expressed, and alleviated within different cultural contexts.
Building Community Capacity
ABOUT: Reclaiming capacity is central to communities reclaiming end of life and after death practice and processes. In this talk Jenny Briscoe-Hough shared her wisdom from decades of helping communities build their capacity and maybe even inspire you to help the communities in which you live.
Dying (well) with dementia at home. One family’s personal story.
ABOUT: When Lisa Twigg learned her beloved father Bob was nearing the end of his life, she was determined to give him the best death possible. In late 2023, the family brought him home from care, where he died from dementia. Lisa shared this deeply moving experience and insights that may help others.
Global history and evolution of euthanasia and assisted dying.
ABOUT: Featuring Dr Philip Nitschke, this session explores the evolving social and legislative landscape of end-of-life choice, including the Swiss human rights model, emerging technologies and the potential impact of AI on end-of-life options.
Death Literacy as Community Practice
ABOUT: In this thought-provoking presentation, Dr Kerrie Noonan explores the concept of death literacy—the skills, knowledge, confidence and social networks that help people navigate dying, death, grief and caregiving.