Joy In Common
We're making space for joy one story, one conversation, one reflection at a time.
Joy In Common offers a simple, accessible practice that supports people to notice and name their experiences of joy. Through three steps, Reflect, Share, Ask, we cultivate awareness of joy in our personal and connected lives. When joy becomes how we connect to each other, communities transform.
Joy In Common is a 501(c)3 fiscally-sponsored project of Upstream Works Collaborative (EIN 82-5298960)
The Joy Guide
The approach is based on a powerful insight: Joy is what freedom, safety, and ease feels like. When we experience joy or witness it in others, we have an opportunity to understand what the concepts of freedom, safety, and ease mean for ourselves and others. Through this practice of noticing joy, we can balance what we pay attention to and engage from an expanded point of view.
Through three steps, Reflect, Share, Ask, we cultivate awareness of joy in our personal and connected lives.
Reflect: Notice what joy means to you and how it feels in your body.
Share: Tell someone what brought you joy, normalizing joy as a topic of everyday conversation.
Ask Others: "What's been bringing you joy?" in order to create space for connection and understanding.
These aren't complex interventions. They're conversation starters. Acts of curiosity. Joy prompts.
What is Possible
When we become aware of what freedom, safety, and ease mean in our own bodies and lives, we can clarify our personal and shared definitions of what these concepts mean. Joy becomes our guide to what we need to thrive. This can impact everything, from personal choices to how we engage with each other to how we design our communities, systems and institutions. Joy becomes our shared universal resource to bridge our current reality with what could be. Joy In Common is making space for joy one story, one conversation, one reflection at a time.
Project Reflect was founded with food and joy at the center of our creative process. While food experiences remain a primary inspiration and portal for connection at Joy In Common, we're thoughtfully expanding and blending into multiple creative mediums and disciplines to create more spaciousness for how people engage with joy. By embracing this multidisciplinary approach, we honor the many ways communities naturally express and experience joy while maintaining our foundational belief in the transformative power of shared experiences.
