A town hall meeting is an American term given to an informal public meeting derived from the traditional town meetings of New England. Everybody in a town community is invited to attend, voice their opinions, and hear the responses from public figures and (if applicable) elected officials about shared subjects of interest. Attendees rarely vote on an issue or propose an alternative to a situation. It is not used outside of this secular context.
There are no specific rules or guidelines for holding a town hall meeting. If the turnout is large, and in a particular case the objective is to give as many people as possible an opportunity to speak, then the group can be broken down into smaller discussion groups. Each group, in that case, appoints someone to summarize discussion of their group. Many companies also have such meetings.
Famous quotes containing the words town, hall and/or meeting:
“A blessing through the ages thus
Shield all thy roofs and towers!
God with the fathers, so with us,
Thou darling town of ours!”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“When Western people train the mind, the focus is generally on the left hemisphere of the cortex, which is the portion of the brain that is concerned with words and numbers. We enhance the logical, bounded, linear functions of the mind. In the East, exercises of this sort are for the purpose of getting in tune with the unconscious—to get rid of boundaries, not to create them.”
—Edward T. Hall (b. 1914)
“One could see that what you are writing was that today’s meeting with President Bill Clinton was going to be a disaster. Now for the first time, I can tell you that you’re a disaster.”
—Boris Yeltsin (b.1931)