Connecting small, influential groups of people in authentic and sensory ways.
The Salon™ is a signature art and culinary experience curated by Salonnière™ to inspire meaningful conversations and multi-sensory impact-oriented moments and collaborations.
Our Art-to-Table™ Salons use cultural tools such as food, drink, and art to break down barriers, bring people together around shared purpose, and create an intimate space for honest dialogue. Blending food, drink and art (which may include music, visual arts, fashion, scent, design, performance, literary or other art forms) allows guests to connect and communicate with and without words on a more emotional level that activates all five senses. This facilitates more authentic conversation and exchange among small inspiring groups of leaders.
Our Art-to-Table™ model allows emerging and top culinary and beverage talent to translate an artwork, design, performance or conversation topic onto the table in creative collaboration with the artist, thinker, or change-maker.
The Art of Conversation.
Our monthly salon dinners are 12-24 guests. We keep the number of people at the table intentionally small to maintain the intimacy and outcome-orientation of our “whole table conversation.” In unique cultural or architectural settings, we engage 25-50 guests. Guests come from a range of backgrounds and fields—arts, sciences, politics, sports, international affairs, philosophy, activism or entrepreneurship—to share in conversation on a particular topic.
The format of our structured conversations is inspired by diplomacy, public narrative training, and community organizing. Our model follows a proprietary “me, us, we” or Pop-up Board Room™ format to create emotional ties, engage in story-telling, create common understandings and foster shared outcomes. This format allows salon participants to identify themselves with the conversation through a personal "me" icebreaker, build a “story of us” with other participants around a topic or cause, and then decide how "we" want to take action together.
Conversations that support causes, artists, thinkers, storytellers and innovators.
Our salons focus on topics that matter today, like women and girls, entrepreneurship, city diplomacy, civil political discourse, food, race, youth, global affairs, technology ("geeks and wonks"), and social justice. Our salons result in collaborations—brain trusts—that help advance a cause or an outcome.
Our salon act as launching pads to introduce emerging talent in arts and culture, as well as thinkers and activists. We partner we aligned groups in social impact, art, media, food, and politics to build access and relationships for artists, creatives, and thought leaders.
Space as conversation.
Salonniere holds salon conversations in three kinds of spaces. First, our unique salon space in Detroit: a glass-enclosed townhouse built in 1959 by famed architect Mies van der rohe, which is itself an artwork. Second, in private living rooms across the country and world. And, third, in unique hotels and historic, architectural or inspiring spaces with real estate partners.
One of the most celebrated projects of Mies van der rohe’s career, Detroit’s Lafayette Park is the perfect venue for intimate salons. And Detroit is a great place for the tough courageous conversations that matter to our world right now.
We hold salons in the private living rooms and at the kitchen tables of women guest “salonnières”, and - with the help of our real estate partners - in cultural venues, historic hotels and inspired spaces in Detroit and other cities that themselves spark important conversations about transformation, art, innovation, and social justice.
