Celebrating five incredible years of high-calibre fundraising for ocean conservation, the 2025 Sapphire Dinner at Carriageworks was glamorous, purposeful and deeply rewarding, raising over $ 1.6 million in just a few hours to help preserve Australia’s fragile reef coastline.
Since its launch in 2021, The Sapphire Project has united more than 1,500 guests and raised nearly $6 million, providing essential support to 15 visionary ocean conservation organisations, from scientific research institutions to Indigenous-led programs and youth education initiatives. 100 per cent of every ticket sold and every dollar raised is funnelled into the cause, including the Great Barrier Reef Foundation, the Great Southern Reef Foundation, Sea Forest Foundation, Surfers for Climate, and Preserving Australia’s Unique Seadragons.
Presented by Tiffany & Co., alongside legacy partner Ximi, the roll call of top-tier support includes digital content experts d’strict, La Prairie, Range Rover, Moët & Chandon, Vantage Markets and Belvedere Vodka, in collaboration with Carriageworks and the Art Gallery of NSW. As production partner, Scope works with each of these vital sponsors, as well as catering partner Laissez-faire, and floral designer The Curated Life, to craft an event that is immersive, experiential, and designed to last as a treasured memory.
Guests were invited into an immersive underwater world created in one of Carriageworks giant hangars. Beneath the girded steel of this beautiful venue, we worked hard to balance what people saw, heard, felt and tasted, each sense as important as the next. Emerging into the ocean-hued space along a seagrass green carpet, guests were met by a powerful visual display, long tables bathed in moving light, and a giant LED wall that offered stunning views of the reef, jewelled colour beneath sparkling aqua waters, capturing their attention and allowing them to exist beneath the ocean, swaying with the coral, swimming with whales, turtles and rays.
A sit-down gourmet dinner, curated by catering partners Laissez-faire, was conceived as a no-waste menu built on locally sourced ingredients, sustainable seafood, and a proud farm-to-table ethos. A giant 16-metre-by-4.5-metre LED wall was erected at the far end of the event layout to ensure visual depth at every seated point, engulfing visitors in a digital oceanic world that amplified the night’s impact, and sound elements were finely tuned to every angle to ensure uniformity across the space.
Finally, the Sapphire Dinner is conceived and executed with a commitment to best practices for reducing environmental impact across the entire supply chain and production processes. It is a carbon-offset event, hosted by volunteers, with event partners covering the not-insubstantial costs of producing the dinner. 100% of ticket sales and funds raised on the night are directly donated to organisations dedicated to promoting sustainability and ocean conservation.
