
Dying Matters Awareness Week
Dying Matters Awareness Week in 2025 is taking place from 5 - 11 May. The theme of this year's campaign is: The Culture of Dying Matters

Every year, people around the UK use Dying Matters Awareness Week as a moment to encourage all communities to get talking in whatever way, shape or form works for them.
There are plenty of ways you can get involved and show your support this year. Read on to find out more.
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Awareness Week 2025: how you can get involved
The Culture of Dying Matters
Pauline, Lawrence and Berna are volunteers with St Joseph’s Hospice, Hackney. And whilst they all have their own cultural experiences of death that set them apart, there are many shared aspects of dying, grief and bereavement that unite them.
In this video for Dying Matters Awareness Week 2025, they share those experiences and beliefs around death and dying, together exploring what the culture of dying means to them.

What's on near you
Hundreds of events are taking place for Dying Matters Awareness Week this year. They include everything from Death Cafes, information stands and open days, to talks, music and craft workshops - and so much more.
Take a look at our What’s On page to find an event near you (or choose from plenty of online-only events too).

Help share our social media posts
Our Dying Matters Awareness Week social media posts share the thoughtful, poignant film – and we’d love your support to help share them far and wide, by liking, commenting, and sharing on your own social media.
> Dying Matters on Facebook
> Dying Matters on Instagram
> Dying Matters on X
> Hospice UK on LinkedIn

Living with Dying
For Dying Matters Awareness Week 2025, Hospice UK Chief Exec Toby Porter spoke to the Living with Dying podcast about why the culture of dying matters, his recent experience of bereavement, and the importance of getting the right care at the end of life.
Embracing Diversity in Grief
As part of Dying Matters Awareness Week, Hospice UK's Compassionate Employers Lead, Lucy, was joined by Imam Abdul Hafeez, Anglican priest Alana Harris, Heather Brooks, Bereavement lead at NatWest, and Nasrin Oskui, the Global Head of Wellbeing at Deutsche Bank.
They explore how organisations can embrace diversity in grief - because the Culture of Dying Matters.
Read the stories
Throughout Dying Matters Awareness Week, we’ll be sharing plenty of fantastic content on our Dying Matters social channels – including shorter versions of our film, videos with contributions from our member hospices about their approach to culture when it comes to death and dying, lots of stories from the voices of people all over the world, and more – all exploring the culture of dying.
We’d love you to see them – so please give our Dying Matters social media accounts a follow, so they’ll appear in your feed.
What else you could do
We can’t do any of this without support from you, and supporters just like you – who want to see the UK’s communities having open and honest conversations about death and dying.
We’d be hugely grateful if you’d consider making a donation to Hospice UK, who run the Dying Matters campaign. You’d be helping keep the campaign running, so that together we can make sure those honest, open conversations are becoming a part of everyday life.
The Culture of Dying Matters
The mission of Dying Matters is to break down the stigma and taboo of talking about death and dying.
To this day, that’s still applicable to much of the UK. But do we all have the same attitudes, views and practices on death and dying?
There are of course many differences in the ways that cultures and faiths approach and mark death and dying. But at their core, feelings about dying, and our experiences of grief, are universal emotions that we all share, no matter who we are or where we live.
While a friend or family member’s death can affect every person differently, studies of grieving brains have shown that there are no scientific differences in relation to race, age or religion. We can all feel the impact of the loss, helplessness, sadness – but we may do it, and show it, in different ways.
We may all talk about death and dying in a multitude of ways, but we share a common thread.
This Dying Matters Awareness Week, we’re focusing on how different communities and cultures in the UK feel, talk about, and deal with death and dying – and what brings them together.
Because the Culture of Dying Matters.
Join us from 5 – 11 May 2025 for Dying Matters Awareness Week.

Awareness Week Resources
Explore and download the official Dying Matters Awareness Week 2025 resources, including supporter and library packs, posters, reading lists, social media graphics, bunting, animated film, and more.
2024 theme: the way we talk about Dying Matters
Patricia is living with an incurable illness. Mumtaz’s husband Rasheeque died in 2021. And Lucy is a Palliative Medicine Consultant at North London Hospice.
As part of Dying Matters Awareness Week in 2024, their powerful experiences explored how language plays such an important part at the end of someone’s life.
> Watch now [click or tap the image to play]
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There was a lot happening for Dying Matters Awareness Week in 2024.
Hundreds of events took place around the UK - explore them.
Read our featured stories of Patricia, Mumtaz or Lucy - or watch our campaign animation (see above).
We shared plenty of resources to help everyone make the most of the week, and some might still be useful now.
We can't do any of this alone, so if you'd like to help make a huge difference when it comes to having honest conversations about death and dying, please consider making a donation.
The theme of Dying Matters Awareness Week in 2024
Honest, timely conversations about death and dying are essential to good end of life care. Yet all too often barriers, including lack of confidence, taboos around discussing death, and confusion about who should be having these conversations mean patients, carers and families may not understand what is happening, or get all the information and support they need.
We shared what the public think about how language used by healthcare professionals has affected end of life experiences, and shared stories from people who are dying, and the families of people who have died.
The brilliant people who work in our 200+ hospices around the UK are experts in death, dying, and end of life care. So we asked them to share their tips and advice on how to start honest, transparent conversations about death and dying to help people feel informed, supported, and empowered at one of the most vulnerable times of their lives.
For Dying Matters Awareness Week in 2024, we helped communities around the UK to come together to talk about having those end of life conversations, whether with their healthcare professionals – or families, friends and colleagues.
Because the way we talk about Dying Matters.
Latest from Dying Matters
The latest news and events from us here.