Festival 2026
The To Absent Friends festival takes place across Scotland from 1-7 November 2026.
It is an opportunity to remember, to tell stories, to celebrate and to reminisce about people we love who have died. To Absent Friends, a People’s Festival of Storytelling and Remembrance is an opportunity to revive lost traditions and create new ones.
Below is a list of the events taking place around Scotland and online.
These listings are live, so new events will be added in the coming weeks. If you have an event or activity you’d like to add, please email details to samara@palliativecarescotland.org.uk.
Music Makes My Memories Magical
Organised by Peacock Nursing Home
1 November 2026
Garden Place, Livingston
This activity is for the Peacock Nursing Home community and by invitation only.
The aim of the project is to invite relatives back into the Nursing Home who lost their loved one in the past year. It is also open to staff and residents who want to remember past loved ones. Everyone will be sent an invitation asking them to come along and also it will ask them to pick a song or a piece of music that is relevant to their lost loved one.
The family member, friend or staff member will have the chance to share their memories, and their selected song/piece of music will be played. The aim of the event is to be positive, social and community-building.
Refreshments will be served afterwards and each family will be presented with a small remembrance gift.
This event gives families/friends the opportunity to share their stories and express their feelings. Photographs will be sent to you.
Everyone will also have the opportunity to leave a message on our memory tree and we will put flowers on our Memorial Stags in our garden.
This activity is supported by a To Absent Friends small grant.
Image credit: Stacie Ong via Unsplash
How to Say Goodbye with Paul Duffney
Organised by North Berwick Coastal Community Connections
Sunday 1 November 2026, 2-4pm
Abbey Church, North Berwick
This activity is open to the public. Please book in advance.
Absent Friends Week is a national festival of storytelling and remembrance - a space to remember those who are no longer with us and share the stories that keep them present in our lives. This year, Coastal Community Connections explores Legacy Burdens – the expectations, beliefs and behaviours around grief that we inherit from our families, communities and wider culture. These can shape how we think grief should look, what we feel able to express and what we learn to keep hidden.
Local writer Paul Duffney illustrates the sometimes dramatic changes in our social trends, describing the changing ways in which individuals and society have coped with the loss of our loved ones. Paul hopes to share his fascination with tracking society’s changes, with surprising, and sometimes humorous, insights.
Find out more and book your free place here.
Grief tending & Remembrance in the community
Organised by Grief Tending in Scotland
Sunday 1 November, 9:00-13:00
The Loft, East Grange, Forres IV36 2UD
This activity is open to the public. Please register in advance.
In Forres you’re warmly invited to a morning of soul hygiene, of feeling your grief, a rare communal resting in our personal and collective sorrows. You are welcome to spend a few hours together in community ritual, giving yourself and each other permission to experience the profundity of our sad and sorrowful selves. We ask each other the question “What do you care to grieve today?” We will have time to sit quietly, internally; time to connect, share our stories and have them witnessed; time to be outside, activating what is hidden, whining.
We will be using 6 gates of grief initiated from author and Soul Activist Francis Weller’s book ‘The Wild Edge of Sorrow’.
”Maturity knows how to carry grief in one hand and gratitude in the other. When the two reside together we’re in the prayer of life.”
The session will be held by Simon Clark, who has initiated Tendings in Findhorn and Auroville, India. He has taken part and led in circles of great variety including the Mankind Project over his 15 years living in Findhorn.
If you’d like to attend please email remembersimon@gmail.com or call on 07737 762313.
This activity is supported by a To Absent Friends small grant.
Mid-Argyll Death Cafe
Organised by Mid-Argyll Death Cafe
Wednesday 28 October, 5:30pm
Dochas Centre, Lochgilphead, Argyll
This activity is open to the public. No need to book.
At a Death Cafe people, sometimes strangers, gather to eat cake, drink tea, and discuss death. Our objectives is to increase awareness of death with a view to helping make the most of our finite lives.
Please join us to remember, celebrate and reminisce about the people we love who have died. You are invited to come along with your memories, maybe a photo, song lyric, poem or treasured item to share their memory.
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