Tuesday Night Dinners

The idea

The idea behind Tuesday Night Dinners is to initiate, on a recurrent basis, everyday dinner gatherings around the world where people can meet while enjoying together a nice meal and exchanging views about how we as human beings can contribute – both locally and globally – to creating a better world for everybody.

The everyday meal with family and friends is a vital tradition of any culture. In every society, the meal is a culturally significant event, that is, it expresses a social context with a lot of historical, cultural, and ethnological connotations. It is an important part of everyday exchange and of the sharing of values.

A meal is a place where people can meet without having some agenda itemised in advance. It is a room for a more free and unpredictable conversation. Just think about the indefinite number of meals in the history of man where important conversations have taken place (*). I want to use the power of »the meal«.

The Project

To launch a project that aims at establishing Tuesday Night Dinners around the world in private homes, public places (such as elderly homes, schools, etc.), community centres, restaurants, etc.

The meals have to take place regularly. Every Tuesday Night Dinner should have a key person responsible for its organisation and for inspiring others to set up subsequent Tuesday Night Dinners not only locally but also globally, that is, in other places around the world. Thus, the key person must assume responsibility for documenting the event on a website.

Rules of the game

Not yet fully defined. I will in the next 3 months discuss the various options and possibilities with a selection of people. I will try to obtain their different ideas and opinions on how to reach the goal of creating Tuesday Night Dinners with a global reach.

The rules of the game should produce a framework that allows participants to get the most out of the project to the benefit of everybody so that people feel that they are making a difference in their respective communities and in the world. It is equally important that the rules of the game are not too strict.

The objective is to create an open community where cultural exchange is on the agenda, where there so-to-say is not only one single truth allowed, but rather a multitude.

Internet

There should be a shared website that allows the exchange of information between each and every Tuesday Night Dinners around the world through uploaded pictures, stories, comments, and reports on how it all went and on what people were discussing and the recipes they used for the dinners. Participants must sign up on the internet to be part of the website, a bit like Facebook.

What do I bring to the table?

My contribution to the project would be my general background in cooking and catering as well as my belief in food as a form of cultural exchange. Being Scandinavian, I am up brought in a very egalitarian environment where the exchange of opinions, and the working together for greater mutual understanding, has played a big part in my life.

I firmly believe that food is a cultural ice breaker. The everyday common meal is something that the global community can share. It is a project that everybody can take part in without being pre-defined, screened, and sorted by gender, religion, or class.

Supporters

Danish government funding
Private corporations

What I will need

Kitchen
Kitchen equipment
Pots and pans
Travel expenses
Hotels
The Tuesday Night Dinner Kit!

Recipes

Documentation

1. Television: a TV-program where I travel the world setting up meals. I will do the planning, the cooking, and then sit down and enjoy. My Scandinavian heritage will be a part of the experience both in terms of the food served and the conversations held. The investigation that I want to pursue in this documentation is: can I initiate Tuesday Night Dinners globally?

Firstly, what happens when I arrive with my Scandinavian cooking and its heritage, can I at all organise Tuesday Night Dinners?

Secondly, what happens when I show how food and cooking open up doors by establishing new contacts between people, setting a different agenda? This is the challenge: will these people and these dinners still be there, say, 6 months after I initiated the event?

2. Internet: the whole documentation will also have to be documented on the website, but not as on Facebook where it is only online. This will start out being real and subsequently documented online.

Spring 2009

When the project commences, it is my plan to start up in the Middle East and from there on travel around the world. This Spring I will begin with 5 try-out dinners, one in New York, Paris, and London respectively, and two in Copenhagen. I am working on having these dinners filmed so that they can be part of the web site.

(*) Important dinners globally
The every day meal in families
The Nobel price dinner
State dinners around the world
Religious dinner every week
The last supper, as an iconic image