House of Riot is an extended art project fuelled by political frustration. It began at Australian Fashion Week 2014 when founder Ollie Henderson hand painted 100 t-shirts with positive messages, and has grown from a creative project to a not-for-profit social enterprise. It’s our mission to bring about social change through creative expression and to encourage young people to take action on the issues that they care about.

On The Floor is our inaugural event series launching in October. Running bimonthly in the lead up to the federal election, each OTF event will bring together 5 panelists to debate an issue young Australians care about. OTF will run in the same format as ABC’s Q&A, with a focus on engaging youth audiences across the political spectrum.

We want to provide a much-needed platform to engage youth audiences by creating a physical + digital space where young people can get informed, voice their opinions - and be heard.
Questions will be collected from the audience and curated by the team to be discussed by the panel. By encouraging youth to actively participate in our program, we hope to foster an environment in which youth opinions are not only valued but seen as an integral part of the solution.

The pilot event “The Future of Sydney’s Nightlife” will be held on the 22nd of September. This event will explore what the newly imposed lock-out laws, smoking and live music restrictions mean for Sydney’s cultural landscape.

The mediator for our first event is Tom Tilley (triple J Hack) and confirmed panellists Jess Scully (Barangaroo Cultural Development Board), Tyson Koh (Keep Sydney Open), Jenny Leong (Newtown Greens MP), Scott Weber (Last Drinks) and Troy Grant (Minister for Justice and Police).

In the pursuit of making change not noise, at the end of the event we will be creating a submission from the panellists and audience comments to be published online and shared with relevant ministers and organisations.