Join us here at the Home Ground Lab

What if beauty was never meant to be extra?

At Home Ground Lab, we believe beauty is essential infrastructure—especially in shelters, transitional housing, and places shaped by crisis or displacement. We’re a creative research and storytelling initiative housed at Clark University’s Integration and Belonging Hub. Our work combines participatory research, narrative design, and community-led practice to help reimagine how we build, design, and care for place.

We share stories, reflections, and evidence that show how beauty supports dignity, healing, and agency in times of disruption.

Why subscribe?

Because you care about:

• The spaces we live in—and how they shape who we become

• Housing, migration, trauma, and justice

• How art, culture, and beauty create new forms of resistance and repair

This is not a newsletter about aesthetics.
It’s about survival. Memory. Belonging.

Subscribe to get full access to the newsletter and publication archives.

What you’ll find here:

• Field notes and stories from our research and collaborations

• Reflections on beauty as resistance in the built environment

• Visual storytelling, audio fragments, and practice prompts

• Invitations to participate in our public calls, projects, and submissions

We’re especially writing for:

• Humanitarians, housing practitioners, and designers

• Activists, artists, and organizers navigating burnout or rupture

• Concerned citizens seeking new ground in uncertain times

Join us as we track how people create beauty where the world said there should be none.

Let’s begin again—through beauty.