Making Belonging: Story, Design & Social Practice

What does it mean to make a place where people feel they belong? And what changes when we make it together?

Join us for an evening of experimentation as students from Columbia University share a series of prototypes exploring belonging. Through story, design, play, and participation, we'll look at social practice as an act of co-creation, making things with people rather than simply for them.

The evening will move between prototypes, conversation, and collective experimentation, asking how the spaces we create—physical, digital, or somewhere in between can invite connection, agency, and a sense of belonging.

We'll be joined by Romy Nehme, an experience and strategy designer, writer, and member of the Columbia Digital Storytelling Lab whose work sits at the intersection of storytelling, imagination, design, and systems change. Romy helped launch New Public, bringing a placemaking ethos to the design of digital spaces, and through her practice Beautiful Seams explores how narrative and experience design can help people imagine and shape different futures. Beautiful Seams.

Come ready to experience, experiment, and make something together.