FINAL FLING

End of life innovation

Barbara’s passion for doing death differently is nothing new. In 2010 Barbara began work on a dream to make end of life planning easier. Over 2 years she designed and developed the UK’s first platform for end of life planning. She launched Final Fling in 2012. It was 5-star rated by Web User Magazine, winning the accolade Best New Website up against giant brands. At that year’s Good Funeral Awards, she won the award: Most Outstanding Contribution to Understanding Death.

Helping with life and death decisions, she went on to launch and host Scotland’s first Death Cafes, held a symposium Design for Death for charity and health sectors, produced Scotland’s first Day of the Dead Festival and over the coming years ran workshops and events across the UK for national programmes like Dying Matters Week and Absent Friends Festival and spoke at the Cheltenham Book Festival and many other events.

Putting ‘rich’ into ritual

Final Fling launched in 2012 and over the years, thousands of people set up free accounts on the platform to stay in control - right to the end. The Life Planning Tools enabled users to save and share Funeral Wishes, Bucket List ideas, store digital legacies like photos and home movies in the Memory Box and share key documents securely in the Safe Deposit Box.

Barbara had a vision: to help put ‘rich’ into ritual. She wanted to be more hands on in delivering good funerals. In 2013 she did Care of the Body and funeral arranging training. In 2014, she trained as a Humanist celebrant. In 2016 she co-founded the Scottish charity A Quiet Revolution to support people with the costs of funerals. In 2016/17 she studied for a Masters in Design Innovation. In 2020 Barbara completed Funeral Director training and launched Only Human, providing a fresh take on funeral services.

Funeral mastery

In 2016 Barbara studied for a Masters in Design Innovation at the prestigious Glasgow School of Art. Her work on 21st Century Funerals was multi-award winning. She gained a Distinction and was awarded the Chairman’s Medal for Innovation. She was thrilled to be first to receive the Innovation School’s inaugural Innovation by Design prize for use of design in creating engagement tools. Her engagement spanned workshops with professionals in the care sector; ethnographic research with individuals - like a mum who’s son was murdered and a woman who’s partner took his own life. As part of her research, she worked in funeral parlours behind the scenes and at funerals. She engaged with the public at a Death Cafe and hundreds of people came along to share views at an exhibition at Glasgow’s Gallery of Modern Art. Her award-winning design solution envisioned transformational change in that could end funeral poverty, boost citizen confidence around funerals, provide a social leveller for funerals and help individuals achieve agency and choice.