Reimagined Community

What I’d done was to put my own journey of exploration out there for others to be a part of.

However, the landscape for social clubs has changed significantly in recent decades. Many have faced closure due to financial struggles, demographic shifts, and declining participation in community governance. Despite this, some clubs have re-emerged with modernised offerings, such as LGBTQ+ community spaces or cultural programmes that appeal to... See more

The term ‘the commons’ has been increasingly used to refer not just to “things” or “assets” (as Silke Helfrich puts its) but more broadly to the “social practices of commoning, acting together, based on principles of sharing, stewarding and producing in common” .

In his book Palaces for the People, Eric Klinenberg reiterates what we already know widely: that outcomes and life expectancy can vary greatly depending on the services and social infrastructure you find in your community.

Klinenberg gives the example of a lethal heat-wave that struck Chicago in 1995. He asked how two adjacent poor neighbourhoods on... See more

We live in a culture in which we have very little intergenerational mingling and that is bad for everyone because when we get to new stages of life we think: Why did nobody tell me this? How did I not know what this entailed?

By the early 20th century, these clubs were not just local hubs but influential in political representation, with many club members holding positions in local and national government - at one point club members accounted for nearly a third of all MPs in parliament. This legacy underscores the role of social clubs in training citizens for democratic... See more

At that scale, running a platform is more like hosting a dinner party than building a rocket. The distinct and valuable thing you’re building isn’t a new technology, it’s a community. The central tasks are recruiting people to join the community and keeping them involved once they’ve joined. The former requires outreach and the latter requires... See more

We see that building a sense of belonging leads to increased collective efficacy, or the ability for a group to achieve a shared purpose together. We see more collective efficacy leading to strengthening belonging even more. It’s a great positive feedback loop that we want to help unlock within neighborhoods.

It’s any group of people who you feel some sort of belonging with and responsibility to.