Democracy and Belonging in Action Poster Fair

Welcome to the digital version of our O&B 2026 Poster Fair!

The posters in this gallery showcase various projects and initiatives that advance belonging and bridging work in different communities around the world. Click on the images below to open full-screen images of the posters.

Equity Arcata is a formal partnership between Cal Poly Humboldt and the City of Arcata working to cultivate a welcoming, safe, inclusive, and racially equitable community for students, faculty, staff, and surrounding residents. This poster shares a place-based model of belonging and democracy in action through shared leadership, community-rooted advisory structures, cross-sector collaboration, convenings, professional development, communications, and sustainable support strategies. Grounded in ongoing partnerships and year-round programming, Equity Arcata offers a concrete example of how institutions and communities can work across difference to strengthen participation, connection, and a larger sense of “we.” 

Equity Arcata: Community, Bridging, and Belonging, by Fernando Paz, Michele Miyamoto, Dr. Rosamel Benavides-Garb, Frank Herrera

This poster draws from my new book, American Welfare: Reclaiming the Dream for All of U.S., to show how we move from othering to shared infrastructure: practices that shift everyday interaction and culture, paired with design choices that shift policy and systems at scale. 

From Othering to Shared Infrastructure: Belonging-by-Design Practices + Democracy-by-Design Choices, by Tracy Evans

The Team Up Project brings together four of the nation’s largest civic and faith-based networks—Interfaith America, Catholic Charities USA, Habitat for Humanity International, and YMCA of the USA—to advance a shared mission: helping communities build bridges across lines of difference through partnership and service. 

A Bigger “We” in Practice: National Partnerships, Local Leadership, and Cross-Difference Service, by Abbie Haug

The poster is inspiried by a series of quilts that have been made, standing as a powerful example of how textiles can carry public grief, political urgency, and collective humanity into shared spaces, shifting culture through witnessing rather than aggression. 

Mending, by Dez Dalton

The Town of Amherst Department of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion has engaged residents through several community-centered initiatives designed to elevate voices, strengthen civic participation, and imagine an equitable and inclusive Amherst. 

From Othering to Belonging: Community Visioning and Cultural Celebration in Amherst, Massachusetts, by Philip Avila, Pamela Nolan-Young

Belonging Colorado is a statewide initiative designed to expand who feels a sense of belonging in Colorado by supporting community-led efforts that bring people together across lines of difference. 

Belonging Colorado: Building Capacity for Bridging Across Difference, Marcy Campbell, Trisha Dehrone, Ph.D.

The Social Connection Student Heroes Leadership Program is a pilot initiative led by the Houston Food Bank that centers youth as catalysts for belonging, dialogue, and democratic engagement. 

Houston Food Bank’s Social Connection Student Heroes Leadership Program: Building Belonging Through Youth Leadership, by Pam Otal, Nathan Ponce, Toral Shah

Across the United States, people are increasingly living alongside one another without truly feeling connected. The Bridgebuilding Blueprint was created to address this challenge by helping individuals and organizations build belonging through intentional relationship building across difference. 

From Difference to Connection: A Practical Blueprint for Bridging and Belonging, by George Zavala, Mike Van Haelewyn, Jennifer Pafias, Eva Long, Alicia Sanchez, Nico Gourdet

This Action Poster will explore the findings and how to research, curate, and operationalize joy from a community project and dream space in Louisville, KY called Joyride. 

Joy is Ours: How to operational joy through oral history, community, and research, by Maya White

Since 2011, Equimundo has developed interventions encouraging boys and young men to champion gender equality through self-examination and community building. 

Moonlight makes community health measurable. Belonging, repeatable., by Chris Hook

Communities experiencing intergenerational trauma and poverty are often served by fragmented systems that require clinical entry points before trust and stabilization are possible. 

From Othering to Belonging: A Community-Embedded Model Advancing Behavioral Health Stabilization Through Lived Experience and Trust, by Dr. Gina Warren, PharmD

The Youth Voice Network is a youth-requested, cross-agency and institutional gathering in Lane County, Oregon where young people come together to examine belonging and wellness in their communities. 

We Will Save Us: Building a Bigger “We” Through Youth Voice, by Lane County Youth Voice Network

Across the United States, declining civic engagement, increasing polarization, and shrinking opportunities for meaningful interaction have contributed to a growing crisis of social isolation and non-belonging. 

The Belonging Bus: Mobile Social Infrastructure for Building Local Belonging, by Kate Storm

Black feminist writers are often undercited as scholars on the particulars of place and belonging. Utilizing creative and visual theory mapping, this study places key concepts from Belonging: A Culture of Place, by Appalachian scholar and Kentucky native bell hooks, in conversation with the work of other Black feminist writers. 

Kentucky is My Fate: bell hooks on belonging and bridging cultures of place, by Ariel C.C. Ward

The Architecture of Belonging presents a healing-centered framework for understanding how belonging is built, fractured, and repaired across communities and institutions. 

The Architecture of Belonging: A Healing-Centered Framework for Narrative, Safety, and Civic Repair, by Janine Branch

In November of 2025, we launched a Teen Toolkit for Museums, as part of an initiative to help cultural institutions mark the 250th anniversary of American democracy. 

Museums as Hubs of Belonging and Imagination, by Tess Benoit

Healing Justice works to prevent and alleviate the harms caused to all by wrongful convictions through advocacy, education, and direct support. 

From Harm to Healing, by Healing Justice Project

A mural style poster depicting how diverse generations from Reconstruction to the present day have made the Constitution their own, and used it to fight for collective liberation. 

The Constitution Is For All of Us, by Taonga Leslie

This poster will display the results of a field experiment conducted with the Los Angeles affiliate of Showing Up for Racial Justice. 

Deep Canvassing to Change Hearts and Minds: Advancing Jail Decarceration in Los Angeles, by Kristen Brock-Petroshius

Field sciences often reproduce “othering” through hidden curricula. ¿field curious? interrupts those patterns by offering low-barrier, welcoming, and paid field science experiences for students. 

¿field curious?: Building Belonging in Field Science through Place, Practice, and Near-Peer Community, by Jessica Malisch, Ph.D.

Greater Clark Foundation is a place-based philanthropic organization in rural Kentucky that will share lessons from Building Trust and Belonging, a multi-year initiative designed to strengthen civic culture through relationships, reflection, and shared practice. 

Building Trust and Belonging as Civic Infrastructure in Rural Kentucky, by Sarah Caton Walters, Beth Willett Jones

The Guidebook for the People integrates multi-tiered systems and restorative practices to help schools move toward structures that repair harm, restore relationships, and keep students connected to their learning communities. 

Belonging Without Othering: A School Design Framework Rooted in Restorative Justice, by Nicodemus Ford

For more than two decades Arts & Democracy has collaborated with partners in Kentucky and New York to build bridges within and across our communities. 

Bridging Belonging through Creativity and Care, by Judi Jennings

The Parkersburg Engagement Project was a 2025 pilot supported by the SHIFT Action Lab to bring together the strengths of bridging, community organizing, and participatory governance. 

More than the sum of the parts: Combining bridging, organizing, and governance in Parkersburg, WV, by Laura Rigell

Across the country, a coordinated campaign of rhetoric around illegal DEI has left nonprofit leaders, educators, funders, and community organizations uncertain about work they are legally permitted to continue. 

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion: Still Necessary. Still Possible. Still Legal., by John Newsome

The Storybook Project is a narrative-bridging initiative that creates spaces of belonging and places the pen into the hands of Black and Queer youth ages 13-26. 

Authoring Belonging: Refusing Deficit Narratives through Youth-Led Storytelling, by Malcom L. King

With the new presidency that began in 2025, hateful language toward immigrant communities has become more prevalent, and numerous xenophobic policies have been introduced targeting these communities. 

Infórmate, Prepárate y Toma Acción, by Angie Vasquez, Comité Caminos, and Tennessee Immigrant & Refugee Rights Coalition

This poster will be an adaptation of material from the Ten Thousand Beloved Communities graphic novel and guide. 

Ten Thousand Beloved Communities, by Kristen Lynn Zimmerman, Leila McCabe

Queer Along the River reclaims and reimagines South London LGBTQ+ heritage from the 18th century on, through walks, talks and exhibitions. 

Queer Along the River, by Dr. Catherine Hahn

Third spaces are rare nowadays, but especially so for neurodivergent and disabled people. Spirited Play Labs has developed a dynamic membership model through state funding that provides accessible, inclusive community third spaces in California! 

Inclusion for the Neurodivergent Community, by Lindsay Teitelbaum

Creative Citizens in Action is a college-wide civic engagement initiative at California College of the Arts that centers the role of artists and designers in advancing democratic participation. 

Creative Citizens in Action: Artists Engaging with Democracy, by Jaime Austin, Bryndis Hafthorsdottir

This poster explores how Indigenous Knowledge and Western science represent different ways of understanding the world—and how they can be brought into relationship without collapsing their differences. 

Understanding Epistemologies to Build Ethical Connection, by Sital Sathia, Sarah DeWitt, Jose Pablo Ortiz Partida

When communities stop showing up to public meetings, institutions tend to read that absence as apathy. The Four C's Governance Framework for Public Engagement starts from a different premise. 

Designed to Deserve Them: A Governance Framework for Belonging, by Mimie Laurant

A Space of Becoming explores what forcibly displaced persons teach us about building the bridge to belonging. 

A Space of Becoming: What Forcibly Displaced Persons Teach Us About Building the Bridge to Belonging, by Heather Rees

The Southern Environmental Law Center’s multimedia storytelling project, Plantations to Pollution: Black Communities, Legacy Pollution, and the Path Forward explores environmental injustices from past to present, and points to these injustices being rooted in slavery and systemic racism. Through authentic storytelling, the project aims to uplift community voices that are often unheard or ignored. The series follows stories from communities across four Southern states: North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia. Our poster will highlight the throughlines from the South's slavery system, the fight for freedom and the current environmental injustices many communities currently endure. By exploring the importance of storytelling to draw an unbroken line from slavery to today, this poster and project seek to raise awareness around how environmental injustices fuel, amplify, and intersect social injustice and inequities. Although many of the conference themes relate to our project, our poster displays regional dynamics in the South and calls attention to historic systems and institutions that continue to harm Black communities. At its core, Plantations to Pollution honors the past, exposes the present, and charts a path toward a brighter, healthier future. Conference theme: Systems, Institutions, and Policies For All of Us, Not A Few, Local and regional dynamics related to belonging and bridging from Kentucky, Appalachia, the U.S. South or Midwest

Plantations to Pollution: Black Communities, Legacy Pollution, and the Path Forward, by Tasha Durrett

This poster presents a qualitative case study examining how adult learners at urban Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) experience belonging, navigate institutional structures, and leverage social currency to support their academic and professional trajectories. Drawing on in‑depth narratives from four adult learners and one faculty member in Washington, D.C.& Maryland corridor, the study highlights how HBCUs function as culturally affirming, community‑embedded institutions that recognize and value the complex identities of nontraditional students. Findings show that adult learners draw on mentorship networks, peer support, alumni ties, and institutional reputation to access opportunities and cultivate a sense of place within the campus community. At the same time, participants encounter structural barriers, including bureaucratic delays, financial strain, and age‑based marginalization, that shape their pathways through higher education. Using the Othering & Belonging Institute (OBI) framework, the poster analyzes how belonging, bridging, and breaking function as sociological processes within racialized educational institutions. By centering adult learners, an often-overlooked population in higher education research, this poster offers insights into how urban HBCUs foster identity development, persistence, and mobility. Implications include strategies to strengthen institutional design, expand belonging, and reduce structural exclusion for nontraditional students.

Belonging, Social Currency, and Institutional Navigation: Adult Learners' Experiences at Urban HBCUs, by Jenene M. Lee