Dave Olguín, director of cultural and community engagement on the Auraria Campus, remembers the first time he was invited to a Longer Tables event at Civic Center Park in 2024.
“It was just so wonderful to sit next to folks that you don’t know,” Olguín said. “Sit next to actual community members in the neighborhoods that you work in and have conversations about what other Denverites and what other Coloradans are thinking and talking about.”
The events Olguín is describing are hosted by the nonprofit organization Longer Tables, which aims to foster community by inviting people to sit at a table with other people they don’t know. Tim Jones founded Longer Tables to address “the loneliness, the disconnection, the isolation that we now see is so clear in our country and in our city.”
On July 26 at 10 a.m. on the Auraria Campus, Longer Tables is inviting 5,280 Denverites to participate in its Mile Long Table event. Over 5,000 people is a large number to have as guests, and it takes a big team to get it all done. Bucket List Community News is one of the superhosts and media partners collaborating with Longer Tables on this event.
The scale of the Mile Long Table is unlike anything Longer Tables has done before. To accommodate 5,280 people, Olguín says that tables will “run in multiple streets” throughout the Auraria Campus. Additionally, while attendees have brought food to past events, the Mile Long Table will be catered by Serendipity Catering. Although the event’s scale might seem overwhelming, Jones says in reality it’s perfect for getting to know folks.
“We’re not engaging with 5,000 people,” he said. “You are engaging with five people at the table. You have three people across from you and a person on each side of you. So, you end up getting a pretty intimate conversation.”
To help get the connections started, Longer Tables provides a list of questions for attendees to reference. “It gives you a prompt to be able to start talking to folks and conversation just naturally starts to flow from there,” Jones said. “For folks like me, they’re a little bit more shy. I think that’s definitely the thing that kind of helps.”
When asked what inspired Jones to create Longer Tables, the executive director joked, “Tacos inspired me. I’m just kidding.” In actuality, it was due to childhood nostalgia.
“My grandma comes to mind,” Jones said. “I just remember as a kid she made fried chicken almost every Sunday evening. We would eat at her table, and it would be the lingering event. It would be two hours where she was not in a hurry to get up and go.”
Later in life, Jones would move to Los Angeles before moving back to Colorado. After his move, he met a woman who asked him if he wanted to have dinner with people he would never have dinner with.
“I’m a high extrovert and I was like, ‘Heck yeah, I’m in,’” Jones said. He was told to bring food and wine, and when he showed up, “it was an 80-foot table.“ Decor and nametags lined the table. Jones said there were only two rules that attendees had to follow: “Number one, there is no job talk. There’s no job titles. Number two, we just want to experience the real you. You don’t have to perform; you don’t have to impress anyone.”
That experience is what led him to start Longer Tables in 2015. Ten years later, the organization continues to produce events due to a “passion” Jones has for connecting people through food.
“One of the biggest barriers to why people don’t invite people over for dinner or get to know their neighbors is because we’re afraid of rejection,” argues Jones. The table creates a more accessible place for people to feel comfortable meeting people in their community whom they did not previously know.
“It makes me really hopeful,” Olguín said. “I personally do a lot of work in Denver throughout different communities, so it’s exciting to be able to be in community and to talk to real people. I keep all of those folks in my mind when we’re doing the work that we do.”
Longer Tables has been working with Denver City Councilwoman Jamie Torres for the event since Auraria is in her district. She sees this as a way to bridge partisan divides and meaningfully connect with her fellow citizens.
“My background is in anthropology,” Torres said. “And I remember something always speaking with me when we would do cultural anthropology and ethnography is that the best ways to know who people are is food and through welcoming people into your home. I feel like this is a version of that at a really large civic scale that really speaks to kind of breaking down walls.”
The Auraria campus was chosen for the Mile Long Table due to its history. “Auraria was home to the first settlers, so actually there was division in the area between the two settler groups,” Jones said. “All these sides of the river, and they were arguing over where Denver should be, and Auraria lost out.”
The area then became a migrant community. “For decades, the immigrant communities lived peacefully together and got through the depression by relying on their neighbors, working together and sharing,” Jones said. “It’s a beautiful picture of a city that is interconnected.”
Unfortunately, in the 1960s, the area flooded and then building the campus displaced the largely Hispanic neighborhood. The history of Auraria is not taking a back seat during the Mile Long Table. Longer Tables has been working with displaced Aurarians on the event, from the food to community activations occurring throughout the event’s duration.
“It’s such a unique opportunity to tell the true history of what has happened on this campus, which is not always beautiful, shiny and glamorous,” Olguín said. “It’s difficult. It’s hard. It’s heartbreaking for a lot of our community members, and we acknowledge that and we’re working on our relationships to develop those relationships so that we can one day have peace and healing on campus for them.”
Not only are people who were impacted by the displacement helping organize the event; they will also be attending. “I think several of them are going to be bringing their families in their network to the event and then sharing some of the history of what took place in that neighborhood,“ Torres said.
Longer Tables is about building community, and organizers say rebuilding connections involves recognizing the choices made in the past had a profound impact on people.
“It’s become a beautiful journey of acknowledging their [displaced Aurarians’] story and ensuring that they not only feel seen, but that that’s what the table is about,” Jones said. “The table is about reconciliation. The table is about bringing people that have been separated together to heal and to share their stories. To connect as human beings.”
