The Café Society, supported by the Channel 4 Talking Heads club, aims to become a network of cafés and restaurants where people meet to eat, drink and talk.
The Café Society argues that there are few places nowadays where people can gather together and engage in serious (not solemn!) talk. On Café Society nights, their local restaurant becomes a focal point where they can go for a satisfying evening out, knowing they will meet others who wish to talk about any of the issues - social, economic, cultural or whatever - they feel concerned about.
The Café Society started in October '94 at The Depot restaurant and wine bar in Barnes in South West London, initially on Sunday evenings once a month, but then on Sunday and Monday every other week. In the course of an evening, as many as 30 people come to mingle, talk and argue.
Other restaurants taking part include Haute Cuisine in Ross-on-Wye, and establishments in Cambridge, Portsmouth and elsewhere.
The idea is also that once the drop-in evenings are running well, there can be occasional more formal Café Society Dinners, with full set meals and celebrity speakers.
The attraction for a restaurant's owners is that the evenings chosen can be those when they are not normally busy, with the events providing a promotional, social and financial boost. There is no charge to restaurants initially. But once functioning, a negotiable 10 to 15% of increased takings is required by the Café Society.
- For further details contact The Café Society, Ray Sheaf, 7 Elmers Drive, Teddington, TW11 9JB (tel 0181 943 4318 or 0171 833 1988).
- To join The Talking Heads Club (which organises other discussion events too around Channel 4 programmes) contact Leslie Davidoff, Broadcasting Support Services, Victoria House, Manchester M12 6HE (tel 0161 272 7722).
- The Depot is at Tideway Yard, Mortlake High Street, London SW4 (tel 0181 878 9462).
- See also the proposal for discussions at local Cafés about films, in the item above, and the description of Academic Inns on page 247 of The Book of Visions (Institute for Social Inventions, 1992).
- A Neighbourhood Salon discussion group, with a different discussion theme each time, and a preponderance of therapists and ageing hippies as members, meets in people's homes every six weeks in the North London area. For details of the next Salon, send an SAE to Nicholas Albery, Institute for Social Inventions, 20 Heber Road, London NW2 6AA (tel 0181 208 2853; fax 0181 452 6434; e-mail: <rhino@bbcnc.org.uk>).
We have a provisional project to promote talk spaces, a project which came out of a futures workshop run at Tadpoles society camp in 1995. We want to make contact with groups or projects involved in, or interested in, talking spaces, such as 'talk tables' in restaurants, and 'chat spaces' in supermarkets and 'talk benches' in public spaces.
Diana Forrest, 111 Holllins Road, Walsden, Todmorden OL14 7QF (tel 01706 815615).
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