Long Table Dialogues

To bring together a diverse number of 15 local business and community leaders in the LGA of Sydney in a performance based dinner discussion 4 times a year at “Bill and George” the Creative Industries Studio in Redfern

The Long Table is an experimental public forum that is a hybrid performance-installation-roundtable-discussion-dinner party designed to facilitate dialogue between artists, academics, business figures, community leaders and human rights advocates. It is a private party held in order to provoke debates of public significance, an interactive dining room for conversations on serious topics. The outcomes will be edited in consultation with the participants and published online and DVD format by Pabrik Productions.

This project is inspired by the first Long Table discussion held between prisoners, artists and activists in June 2003 at the Casa da Lapa Rio de Janeiro as part of People's Palace Project 'Staging Human Rights'. A Long Table on Performance and Human Rights was also held on 27 April 2005 at Queen Mary, University of London in order to help inform the agendas of Performance Studies International #12: Performing Rights conference.

These evenings will be facilitated by the collective of artists who operate the creative industry studio “Bill and George” at William St. Redfern. During the course of the evening the 12 participating artists will  serve dinner to 15 invited members of the local and business community as well as perform and facilitate an animated discussion on issues pertinent to the economic and civic well being of the city. We will seek advice on the services of the local Aboriginal Hospitality Training College Yaama Dhinawan to cater for the evening.

The purpose of these evenings is to facilitate dialogue and build genuine connections between artists who represent the cutting edge of creative industries in the Sydney LGA and community and business leaders whose lives intersect with the broader social fabric that artists work in. The evenings will be designed to reflect the interests of the invited participants and the outcomes will be publishable online and in DVD format as well as forming part of the content in a catalogue at the end of the 2007/2008 financial year. We are undertaking this as practiced based research into the networks and connections and community building that is vital to the long term sustainability of  the artist led initiatives scene and the broader interests of creative industries within the framework of city of villages approach.