Preparatory Material

Providing the right amount and the right type of preparatory material for the salon is key. The most important thing we do is ground the salon in personal experiences. We do this because you can disagree with people’s opinions but cannot disagree with their experiences. From this place we can really begin to learn about those who are different from us. In addition, this positions the salon in a very personal manner paving the way for deeper connection. (Don’t worry you will also get to the intellectual).

Some example of questions we have asked are below:

Romance: What is one of your most romantic moments (either alone or with someone)

Play: What was your form of play as a child?

Femininity: Share one of your most feminine moments.

Identity: Name an experience when the external way you were viewed conflicted with your own understanding of yourself.

The second part of the preparatory material are the readings, videos, songs, etc that relate to the theme and will get people thinking differently about the topic or give them a deeper look at what it means. The readings should not be too long or complicated just interesting articles or fun songs we may all know but have not really dug into with others before.

In order to create questions and the pre-readings/viewings we typically take 2-3 weeks before sending out the invitation to immerse ourselves in the topic. We chose themes that we would like to cover and then choose content that will help us draw out those themes.