A new era of belonging ✨
Friends, welcome!
Before we begin, I'd like to tell you a little more about why we are here.
I spend most of my time with people who bring people together, for a living or for pleasure. People who design human experiences, whether they are in the form of retreats, workshops, events, off-sites, dinners, talks or anything in between.
What strikes me is that, as a collective of practitioners, we don't currently have a place to collect our ideas, methodologies and experiments. The Institute of Belonging intends to be a repository of creativity - what are we experimenting with, what's emerging, what's coming to a close? Belonging is always a generous act of co-creation - it's only received when also given. It's been an honour to co-create pockets of belonging with you for a decade and I have a deep desire for this orbiting to gain more collective gravitas.
The Institute of Belonging is a living lab for people who love bringing people together.
It's a shared inventory of people, practices, and communities that create real moments of connection.
Part interdisciplinary research in the open, part exploration of joy, the Institute intends to empower those who boldly and generously experiment with the magic of human connection.
T
his last month has turned the world upside down. While our economies are being reshaped by what's "essential", the cadence of our days is marked by zoom calls, voice notes and slow mail. In the midst of this chaos, what’s essential for humans seems to be staying connected to one another.
And, in the midst of this chaos, I’d like to tear apart the over-used concept of community and dive deeper into what’s at its core: connection.
Physicist Carlo Rovelli in a brilliant interview with On Being host Krista Tippett says that humans don’t understand the world as made by things, but by happenings: events limited in space and time. In the same way, human relationships and thus the webs they form (“communities”), are also measured in happenings, in moments of connection.
What exactly are these moments? How are they experienced? What are they made of? Most of all, how are they designed?
That’s precisely what I’m interested in – the phenomenology of connection.
As a cultural response to a cultural movement, this work doesn’t intend to be prescriptive or even worse, “right”. It intends to be a collective inquiry and a conversation. I want to pin our stories like giant butterfly wings on wall. I want to understand the anatomy of our gatherings in a visceral, nose to tail detail. I want to know what’s the intimate dinner or celebration that has changed your life and given you meaning. I want to know how a community started and why it dissolved. I want to know which conversations you’re keeping like treasures in the back pockets of your mind.
So, here we are.
This weekly newsletter will cover:
Content that's striking a cognitive chord (Contemplations)
Exciting projects gatherers around the world are working on (Celebrations)
Pieces of magic I see in the universe (Correlations)
Thought-provoking questions that have come up with some of you (Conversations)
In the following weeks, you can expect interviews with gatherers Charlotte Terrien and Lucija Matic on Sandbox, Domus and beyond; Christina Herbach and Graham Garvie on BYOS and the best London community parties; and Ankit Shah on Tea with Strangers and neighborhood initiatives.
This is, of course, work in progress. I'd love to hear what else you want to see covered as this is your space, too. Please keep sending me what you are working on and what you are learning. Don't be shy, slide into my DMs and tell me everything!
Oh, and if you have fellow gatherers who we need to include, feel free to share the love and tell them to sign up on the website.
Contemplations
I'm enjoying Priya Parker's new podcast on gathering in times of crisis, Together Apart and Brené Brown's Unlocking Us which has really helped me wrap my head around the current situation (thanks Genevieve Wastie for the recommendation).
A few of us loved watching the 2020 Universe in Verse poetry event by Brainpicking's Maria Popova. They even have the previous ones released on the website as a gift.
Very grateful for Tim Leberecht and the House of Beautiful Business team for the Living Room Sessions being hosted every week.
Mary Hurd sent over this NYT article where chef Garbielle Hamilton reflects about the current role of restaurants and how they have transformed over the last decade. It really made think about how the community world has been similarly transformed...
For the past 10 years I’ve been staring wide-eyed and with alarm as the sweet, gentle citizen restaurant transformed into a kind of unruly colossal beast. The food world got stranger and weirder to me right while I was deep in it. The “waiter” became the “server,” the “restaurant business” became the “hospitality industry,” what used to be the “customer” became the “guest,” what was once your “personality” became your “brand,” the small acts of kindness and the way you always used to have of sharing your talents and looking out for others became things to “monetize.”
Celebrations
Casper ter Kuile's anticipated book, The Power of Ritual, is available for pre-order!
Casper and his collaborators also released a beautiful report on mourning in times of covid.
Molly Sonsteng released a useful guide for event organsiers: Six Tips for Reimagining your Gala. My favourite tip? "Reinvent, don't replace".
Jonny Miller just wrapped up a 30-day meditation course he organised.
Hannah Smith has been beautifully consolidating the Point People collective reflections on navigating our disrupted world.
Correlations
The Carlo Rovelli interview "All reality is interaction" mentioned earlier talks about happenings. This meditative Alan Watts lecture also talks about happenings, from a very different perspective (at 4'30min).
I saw a spectacular video of Krista Tippett reading a Christian Wiman poem about a store that's open all night and has "nothing but necessities". In our conversation with the Point People community we are also talking about what's essential - what relationships are we leaning towards or away from.
Conversations
Questions communities around me are exploring this week:
If we call a part of society "heroes" does it make everyone else feel anxious about being "useful enough"?
What silver lining are you finding in this situation?
What's the most physical of digital events?
Solitude vs loneliness - how we do we define the difference?
And that's a wrap of the inaugural newsletter!
To my community architects,
my people, my sangha,
With gratitude and devotion,
V✨