ENROLMENT OPEN | COMMENCING JANUARY 2027

 

Monthly creative practice for funeral ceremony makers

What if you could practise creating funeral ceremonies without a family sitting in front of you?

What if you had a place to experiment, play with ideas, try something completely different and see how other ceremony makers would approach the same brief?

Welcome to
The Ceremony Exchange

A monthly creative practice space for folk who create funerals

 
 

WE RARELY GET TO PRACTISE THIS WORK

 

As celebrants, funeral directors, death doulas, interfaith ministers and ceremony makers, we're often asked to create something deeply personal under enormous time pressure.

We meet the family.
We hear the story.
We gather the details.
And then we make the ceremony.

But crafting ceremony is a creative practice.
And creative practice needs… well… practice.

You don't learn to write music by only performing on opening night.
You don't learn to paint by only exhibiting finished paintings.
And you don't have to wait until the next funeral to strengthen your ceremony-making muscle. (And it is a muscle.)

The Ceremony Exchange is your practice studio.

It’s also your treasure trove, because this isn’t your standard course or class, it’s an exchange. Because - we actually exchange ceremonies.

This is the bit that makes it different.

You won't just receive my ceremonies & ideas.
You'll see what other ceremony makers imagined.
Different people.
Different experiences.
Different cultures.
Different aesthetics.
Different ways of thinking about death, grief, ritual and belonging.
The same brief might produce 20 completely different ceremonies.

And that's the point.

 

THIS ISN'T ANOTHER FUNERAL COURSE

There are plenty of places to learn the mechanics of conducting a funeral. This is different.
The Ceremony Exchange is a practice studio.

Each month, you'll receive a different fictional funeral scenario.
You design the ceremony.
You share what you've created.
Then you get to see what everyone else imagined.

There is no "right" funeral.
No marking.
No gold stars.
No correct answer.

Just a whole lot of people asking:
What else might be possible?

12 MONTHS. 12 VERY DIFFERENT FUNERALS.

Across the year, we'll explore situations that stretch and strengthen different parts of your ceremony-design muscle:

01 — THE UNEXPECTED DEATH | JANUARY

A 63-year-old dies suddenly of a heart attack.
How do you create ceremony when nobody had time to prepare?

02 — THE YOUNG ADULT | FEBRUARY

A 24-year-old dies in a car accident.
What does a funeral look like when many of the mourners have never been to one before?

03 — VOLUNTARY ASSISTED DYING | MARCH

Someone chooses voluntary assisted dying after a long illness.
What becomes possible when a person has actively participated in their own dying and farewell?

04 — THE LONG LIFE | APRIL

A 98-year-old dies after almost a century of living.
How do you honour a long life without trying to tell every single thing about it?

05 — THE ESTRANGED FAMILY | MAY

A complicated and dysfunctional family has to come together.
How do you hold contradiction without pretending everything is okay?

06 — TWO WORLDS OF BELIEF | JUNE

A deeply religious parent dies. Their adult children are secular.
How do you honour someone's faith without asking others to perform a belief they don't share?

07 — THEY DIED BY SUICIDE | JULY

Someone dies by suicide.
How do you create ceremony that honours the whole person and makes room for complicated grief?

08 - BORN SLEEPING | AUGUST

A baby is stillborn.
How do you create ceremony for a life that was brief but deeply significant?

09 — THE CHILD | SEPTEMBER

A seven-year-old dies.
How do you create a ceremony that holds the enormity of the grief and encourages children to participate?

10 — THE ABSENT FAMILY | OCTOBER

Someone dies with very few surviving relatives.
Who gets to belong when there isn't an obvious family to organise the funeral?

11 — BETWEEN WORLDS | NOVEMBER

A life has crossed countries, cultures, languages and generations.
How do you hold multiple identities without flattening any of them?

12 — THE MEMORIAL | DECEMBER

When the body is not present, how do we complete without a committal?
How to design a supportive experience without their physical body present?

Over twelve months, The Ceremony Exchange will become a growing library of possibilities.

Ceremonies.
Rituals.
Readings.
Songs.
Objects.
Questions.
Ideas.
Floor plans.
Ways of gathering.
Ways of saying goodbye.
Ways of involving children.
Ways of working with bodies.
Ways of making space for grief.
Ways of doing things that nobody thought to try before.
Not a library of perfect ceremonies.

A library of possibilities.

 

In a world where AI is taking our language…

Let's return to each other.
Because the most interesting ideas don't always come from a template.
They come from conversation.
From curiosity.
From seeing how someone else approaches the same problem.
From borrowing an idea and making it your own.
From thinking:

“Oh. I would never have thought of that.”

This is a space to keep developing your own ceremony-making voice while being inspired by the collective intelligence of your peers around the globe.

Imagine. Create. Exchange. Inspire.

$49 AUD/month

Cancel anytime.

OR

$490 AUD/year

That's two months free, with access to the Exchange for the full year.

Your membership gives you access to the current monthly practice plus the growing Exchange library while you're a member.