civic duty is the basis for belonging.

Despite being an intertwined society, we live in an era of great civic disengagement.

we are wholly dependent on others for food, health, democracy, cat videos, toilet paper. you’d think we would be connected, collaborating, communal. but we’re not.

we have relationships - but as clients and vendors, drivers and pedestrians, avatars and viral posts. not as human-shaped blobs that live and matter, together, in a place.

we are entangled but not connected.

‘community’ and ‘society’ are not products we use, services we access, or content we consume. they exist uniquely when we engage with and for others. there is pulsing delight in showing up for others. it could be trivial - learning someone’s name, holding the door, not farting on the bus. it could be practical - cleaning up the park, buying local, supporting a nonprofit. it could be grandiose - marching, cooking for the street, voting. it could be almost anything. most important is to show up and be.

so if you want to belong, if you want to contribute, if you want connect to other human-shaped blobs - come clasp civic life with all your humanity and joy. come get stuck in.

We need to get social.

We live in an increasingly unsocial world. We often feel anonymous and alone, with little sense of shared purpose or belonging, our closest relationships living on a tiny screen (this one you’re staring at).

This feeling has been variously called the loneliness epidemic, the decline in social capital, and the friendship recession. But it extends beyond our relationships into how we feel about our lives. Many of us have this nagging sense that there is something we’re missing out on; that there is more to living, more to life; that there exists a texture and intensity out there in the world, but somehow we’re not a part of it.

Let’s stop hoping for a chance encounter, trying to catch someone’s eye or going to a deflating meetup. let’s do it right. profound and meaningful. lighthearted and fanciful. daily encounters and big celebrations. we think the point of life is to connect and that you could belong anywhere as long as you had your people (and your people had you). it takes 200 hours* to make a close friend, soup to nuts; we better hop to it.

*we think we can go faster

living is local - so let’s connect there.

do you really know where you live? does it feel like ‘your’ neighbourhood? if you’re in a major city you live within a 15-minute walk of 50,000 people - how many can you call when you’ve locked yourself out? how many call you to celebrate a promotion? how often do you get that dopamine rush of bumping into someone you sorta know? do you know your baker, barista, bartender, or banker by name? probably not. but you could.

We want to anchor our relational lives in our neighbourhoods - where proximity means spontaneity; where connectivity means responsibility; where real life is really happening.

we must have fun.

sure, ‘fun’ doesn’t fit with the others. it’s not a catchy slogan or a powerful brand. ‘fun’ is not serious enough to matter.

but holy moly does being alive have to be fun. not just kinda fun. wildly fun. can’t-catch-my-breath fun. miss-my-own-wedding fun. we believe that collective fun is societal glue. it’s not a byproduct; it is the product.

so that’s what we want to do, with you. have a metric ton of radical fun.