Education about death – teaching about life

About the project

The current educational project entitled: “Death Education” (DED) has the ambition to help overcome the silence and encourage people in the European community to consciously deal with the limitations of human nature / end of life. “DED” is a special project that trains adults to apply their life skills. Why special?

Death is the future problem of an aging society. Coping with one’s own transience, with the death and grief of loved ones is one of the great tasks of every human life. The idea of transnational work on the subject arose 2 years ago at a meeting in Greece. At the same time, a colleague from Austria lost her husband and another colleague from Greece lost her mother. In many comforting conversations, it quickly became clear how enriching it is for each person to learn about different rituals and traditions. But then we didn’t have the guts to write a project request for it. Well, in times of pandemic and war, collective mourning is so present that today we see the thought of this time as necessary.

Although there are linguistic and behavioral codes for the central issues of life, in Western culture silence often reigns in the face of death. How is it possible to talk about something that is obsessed with fear, uncertainty, pain and loss?

To this end, in 2021 the University of Regensburg initiated its own course on the topic of “Dying”. This highlights the relevance and gives courage to learn more about dying and death through transnational learning and to talk about it with people from different cultures!

So we need spaces where we can ask questions about rituals, traditions, and experiences that don’t just end up in fear-filled private conversations about how you are. We activate this process with our “DED” project, because the manipulations and experiences in Europe are different. We need transnational training in professional exchange, in search of a healing way to deal with our own mortality and the grief associated with it.

“DED” presents an additional offer (offer) for education that does not yet exist in Europe. It can be adapted to other European countries and provides lifelong learning. The most important results during the project period are:

Result 1: A website with the following results

Output 2: A guide with various examples of good practice for approaching this personal, challenging and liberating topic.

Output 3: Implementation of a library on the website

Outcome 4: Interactive art exhibition