The "OPEN AIR LIVING ROOM" is a collaborative work between Jon Bowra and Katrin Hattenhauer, Fusion Arts, the East Oxford Community Centre and the local people of Cowley Road, Oxford.

​

This project wanted to give the opportunity for many surprises and unexpected encounters of humans with each other.

​

A living room reminds us of our former or current homes and is understood as place of being together and to connect and to share what life has been to us outside of home.

 

This concept in mind, we created the "Open Air Living Room" close to a bus stop on a busy pavement where people are going about their everyday lives. As we put something so domestic out on the street, people slowed down in surprise to see something so familiar and yet so strange. After the first few days this place became a vital part of the street and we became neighbours with the people who lived there.  

 

We invited people to sit down with a cup of tea, meet and have a chat with a stranger or a person that they might have seen many times before in their neighbourhood but never had a chance to talk to them about their everyday lives or something philosophical like: why are we here? What makes live worth living? What does life asks of us? And in the same time there was an opportunity to listen and to be heard and to share what makes us human.

 

​