Belonging can be both a feeling people carry into the room and a structure that must be intentionally built into spaces to support them once they’re gathered.
I joined Ashley Gallegos, the Places of Belonging director at UC Berkeley’s Othering & Belonging Institute, at a News Futures Care Collaboratory conversation to explore how civic gatherings can move beyond surface-level inclusion and toward a sense of deeper belonging for all participants.
Belonging is more than feeling welcomed into a room — it is about being recognized as a full participant, with the agency to shape the meeting experience itself. It arises in tension with “othering,” and it prompts us to take into account who has been excluded, why and what systems made that possible.
Ashley named four key elements that support belonging:
- Connection: Feeling linked to others
- Recognition: Being seen for who you are
- Inclusion: Having your presence valued
- Agency: Being able to shape outcomes
These pillars serve as a diagnostic tool both for evaluating whether people feel included in a gathering, and for assessing whether the space has been designed to include them. Belonging, in this sense, requires rigorous design and attention to building relationships with care.
Making space for all
Designing for belonging means paying attention to power dynamics, cultural norms, pacing and emotional accessibility to ensure that convenings consider diversity of all kinds. Practices such as deep listening, cultural sensitivity and trauma-informed design are essential.
- Design for belonging
- Why: Belonging requires clear signals built into the structure of an event.
- Try this: Does this gathering foster connection, recognition, inclusion and agency? If not, which do you need to strengthen? See this practice guide that takes those components even further.
- Center participants in the design
- Why: Prioritize people before information, and communicate belonging through how you set up the space.
- Try this: Ditch the seating rows for circles. Bring objects of beauty and care like flowers, colorful tablecloths and toys for folks that get fidgety. Begin with relational activities that convey “you matter here,” from greetings to group check-ins to community goal setting.
- Use narrative as a bridging tool
- Why: Belonging is shaped through narrative. We build understanding and connections through sharing personal experiences.
- Try this: Open sessions with stories, poetry or lived experiences that honor multiple ways of knowing.
- Embrace tension and difference
- Why: Difference often becomes a wedge. Belonging helps build bridges.
- Try this: Incorporate relationship-building activities like listening circles, paired interviews or neighborhood walks. Create conditions for disagreement-with-care by co-creating shared ground rules, and name when tension is a sign of growth.
- Make emotional accessibility the norm
- Why: If your gathering prioritizes only a certain kind of participation, it excludes people. People carry different rhythms, energies and access needs. Uniformity erodes care.
- Try this: Offer varied modes of participation: talking, writing, drawing, moving. Make space for silent reflection. Let people share stories through recipes, objects or images.
Dig deeper
- Read jesikah and Ashley’s full conversation on belonging at News Futures
- What is belonging? By Othering & Belonging Institute
- Belonging: A weekly practice guide By Othering & Belonging Institute
- Belonging design principles By Othering & Belonging Institute
- A resource guide for belonging builders By Othering & Belonging Institute
