Recently, i’ve been joining/starting a lot of fun community groups. I thought I’d share some of these to help spread the idea of fun community building.

Homework Club
Four of us started this club while playing board games (see below). Our board game night was big enough that we had to split into two different games. We realized that we had unintentionally divided ourselves into college-educated and college-dropout groups. So our homework club initially started as a joke. In fact, the original name was the “some college club”. The idea was simple and engaging enough that we nearly tripled our numbers in the first week of existence. Here’s how it works:

The first week, you get together just to talk about how things will work for your group and to get together the initial study list. For us, we now meet every other week and only half the group will present their work at any given meeting. This way, you have a month to prepare your presentation (it is encouraged to try and “out-do” each other… rumor is that one participant is working on making a working steam engine for their presentation on how steam engines work). Once you have figured out how your group will run things, you then put all the random things you want to study on pieces of paper and then put the pieces in a hat. Each participant then picks one topic. Just to give you some ideas, some of the topics that we’ve had so far are modern feral children, native plant species in Indiana, the invention of time, ball lightning, and labor relations in different provinces of China.

Not only do you get to hang out with folks that you might not get a chance to regularly, but you also get to find out lots of really cool stuff that you’d never think to look up on your own.

S.M.A.C. (Saturday Morning Adventure Club)
SMAC is apparently something that went on here in btown for two years but died down not too long ago. Weekend before last (after about 10 of us biked out of town and then went sliding down slippery rock), we decided to bring it back. For our first SMAC, we went hiking through Hoosier National Forest to a cave (where we went spelunking) and then to a shallow part of Lake Monroe (where we went swimming and had a mud fight). Along the way we walked through dozens (hundreds?) of butterflies, found some crawldads, and had lots of good laughs. In addition to creating community, this is a great source of exercise and a great way to get to know the world around you.

Board Game Night
I’ve mentioned before that i wish people would realize the community-building potential of board games. Since winter, i’ve been a part of a group of people who get together at least one night a week (with a once-a-month all-day event) to play board games. We mostly play European board games (they are nice if you are looking for something new), but there is no reason why you couldn’t play games like Monopoly, Life, Payday, Risk, etc. Its up to you and your community, but i’d recommend trying something new from time to time. We hardly ever play the same game twice, but that’s largely due to the insane collection of games that we have access to.

Field Day
Field Day is just like it was when you were a kid and you had Track and Field Day in school, but you can get creative with it. I attended my first Field Day as an adult earlier this summer (in Indianapolis). We flew kites, played jarts, kickball, four-square and more. I loved it and decided to organize one here (was originally going to be on the 26th of August, but will likely be moved back to the beginning of Sept). We will be having field day at Cascades Park so that we can have access to nature’s slip-and-slide, Slippery Rock. We’ll also have volleyball, sack races, wheel-burrow races, and lots more. Again, a great way to build communtiy, get some exercise, and get people out to their local parks.

Let me know what kind of fun ways you are building community in your neighborhood.