'The Meeting House' brings together material from American multimedia artist Sam Durant's project of the same name, which acts as a platform for inspiring new ideas in relation to the intractable structures of racial discrimination and segregation. Sam Durant's project, 'The Meeting House', takes place between The Old Manse, a historic house where leading thinkers such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau and Margaret Fuller discussed the issues of the day, including abolitionist debates, and the Minuteman National Park where the American Revolutionary War began in 1775. The project acts as a platform for inspiring new ideas in relation to the intractable structures of racial discrimination and segregation. Based on houses constructed by the first free Africans in late eighteenth-century Concord, Massachusetts, the pavilion structure creates an open, transparent framework oriented to the future. Presented as a series of booklets in a folding slipcase, 'The Meeting House' documents a series of programmes that invite visitors to participate in a dialogue about the issues brought to light by Durant's thought-provoking project. These programmes include workshops, readings and discussions focused on African-American writing, philosophy, music, food and spirituality.
