Celebrancy and Ritual Leading
Since 2018, I’ve been creating and leading ceremonies including funerals, weddings and other special occasions, rites and rituals. My celebrancy practice draws on my 20 years making performances, and a lifetime of trying to creating shared moments of meaning. Having worked with cancer communities since 2003, I am particularly interested in how we can create spaces of shared vulnerability, honesty and integrity. In 2024, via a grant from the Arts Council, I trained as a Toastmaster, and am a member of the International Guild of Professional Toastmasters, and completed my Foundation in Doula Training as a Death Doula with Living Well Dying Well. These trainings, alongside mentorship, have deepened my practice in meaningful ways.
Though I grew up Jewish - and still find many of the traditions meaningful - I tend to create / co-create ceremonies through a non-religious lens, drawing on art, literature and a spirituality which is inclusive, questioning, accessible and welcoming. I am not a full-time celebrant and, as such, prefer to work on ceremonies which will challenge me, and for which my specific skills are necessary. That said, I have a large community of celebrants who - if I’m not the right person for the work - I can recommend.
As a celebrant, I have rates for ceremonies inside and outside of London, with a sliding scale for funerals and weddings done by mutual negotiation dependent on scale. I am enthusiastic about bespoke ceremonies for unique occasions as well (divorces, birthdays, retirements, cancer treatment endings, etc). I am particularly interested in challenging situations that may benefit from some alternative approaches to ceremony-making, as well as with queer weddings/funerals, and working with those who have chronic or terminal illness. If you or someone you know is at the end of their life, I am also happy to engage with you/them while they are alive, to ensure their wishes are fulfilled. I am interested in an equity between biological and chosen families, whereas with so many traditional ceremonies it is only the nuclear or biological family whose wishes are prioritised.
For my celebrancy practice, I am indebted to the guidance and mentorship of many, including Sue Fox & Gilly Adams (whose Rites of Passage workshops was formative in my practice), my ‘students’ from ‘Queer Corralling and Comforting’ (a Queer Extension Course which I led in 2021), camp counsellors from Seeds of Peace (where I worked from 2001-2005), and my Jewish education teachers who impressed on me - from a young age - the values of Tikun Olam, or making the world a better place.
(NB: I’m including my two idols: Moira Rose (Schitt’s Creek) and Lydia (Beetlejuice). I will never look as glamorous as these two, but I promise to try.
