In some initial meetings with Summers Corner, a master planned community in Summerville, SC, we conceived of an idea to take a more grassroots approach to community engagement – let's invite some people to dinner. Let's make them intimate. Let's invite stakeholders in the community. Let's pick a discussion theme for each dinner. Let's eat.
This is not a new concept. The salon. The Jeffersonian dinner. We called them Dinners and Conversations. The client wasn't sure how this might translate to home sales or success, but we knew if we could gather people around really great food and have a conversation about what a new community could and would look like, then the outcome would be infectious.
Turns out, they were a huge success and will most likely transition into the community itself.
Here is a nice little blog post, in their words, of what they discovered.