Lab
Lab
The experience economy is booming. Brands everywhere want people to feel meaning, purpose, and connection – in stores, museums, music festivals, theme parks, and beyond. Meanwhile, church liturgists have spent millennia learning the craft of evoking these very experiences through the five senses.
Co-hosted with the Episcopal Bishop of Chicago, the Liturgy Lab brought liturgists and experience designers into the same room. This group of 18 leaders worked across paradigms for two days of broadening imagination, deepening understanding, and unleashing potential.
Where do we go to become the people we are called to be? Incubated at the On Being Project, the Formation Project was a year-long pilot to explore how to design for spiritual deepening across identity and geography. It supported seekers in the pursuit of nothing less than transforming their hearts and way of being in the world.
Core to our design inquiry were the experiences of covenanted small groups, spiritual reflection practices, elders, and discernment. Inspired by Alcoholics Anonymous, monastic communities — especially Catholic Sisters — and the Young Presidents Organization, the Formation Project has heightened our understanding of what is possible online and affirmed the necessary elements of formation.
As a result of these gatherings — which convened leaders of CrossFit gyms, maker spaces, dinner churches, and everything in between — we’ve gained remarkable relationships and crucial insights into the emerging future of community life and meaning-making.
Following hundreds of interviews with innovative communities since 2014, our gatherings convened leaders to learn from one another and wisdom teachers, reconnect to their purpose, and explore collaboration.
You can read more about our gatherings in this insights report.