The Departure Lounge is the Academy’s most ambitious public engagement project to date.
We want to enable people to talk more openly about death, dying and our aging population. By taking a positive stance on the process of dying, we aim to help people understand how their wishes, feelings and values can be incorporated into their treatment as they die, building agency and encouraging conversation.
---
Would you rather die in hospital or at home?
What's the best way to manage pain?
What would you need to finish in your final months?
---
Through connecting people to the latest medical evidence, we will empower people to start planning a better end of life experience for themselves and their loved ones, and ensure that future policy work in this area is shaped by the views of the public.
We will do this through creating an innovative public engagement space in a busy shopping centre and hosting a series of events, workshops and facilitated discussions across the UK.
The Departure Lounge will pop up in a London shopping centre in May and June 2019, offering a free space where people of all ages and diverse ethnic backgrounds can learn about the latest medical research on death and dying, and their preferences available in the ‘journey’ towards death. This coincides with Dying Matters Awareness Week 2019.
We are also developing a flat pack version of The Departure Lounge to be used at events across the UK, alongside dialogue workshops in partnership with Ipsos MORI which will feed into future policy catalysis work.
We welcome contact from researchers working on death, dying and related fields who are interested in The Departure Lounge and our associated policy work. For more information, please contact Holly Rogers.
- Visit The Departure Lounge website to experience the exhibition.
- For ongoing updates on The Departure Lounge project please visit our project page.
The Departure Lounge is being created in collaboration with creative agency The Liminal Space and is supported by the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy, The Health Foundation and Wellcome.