Friendly Fridays: What Makes Somewhere Worth Going To?

Blessing Family 🪘🔥  

Let me tell you something strange about writing the future.

In mine, Friendly Fridays has been running for twenty years.

Once a month, 32 Tribal Lounges across the Village open their doors around the same theme. 

We start with an icebreaker. 

Then comes the Travel Mixer - our platonic version of speed dating, where the entire point is leaving your chair and meeting somebody you didn't arrive with.

At 7:30, the main event begins.

This month, it's Open Mic Night.

Except Leicester isn't having one.

Everybody's going to Paris.

Now...

Before somebody checks the website and starts wondering whether they've missed a Eurostar announcement, let me explain. 😂

I'm talking about the Global Village we're writing.

The Village after twenty years of building.

In the stories, the Tribe began in Leicester with a handful of people and an idea. Twenty years later, it has grown into something much bigger - 32 Tribal Lounges, members across the world, and people who can move between cities without necessarily starting again from zero.

That's the Village Zaire lives in.

In that Village, Leicester can have a quiet Friday because Paris isn't quiet.

Members can travel.

A friend can message another friend.

Somebody knows somebody who knows an Afrobeats artist willing to give the Village a Friday night nobody was expecting.

And suddenly the microphone everybody thought would be standing in Leicester is waiting in Paris instead.

That's fiction.

For now.

But lately I've been thinking about why we're writing it at all.

Because perhaps the point isn't to convince you that this Village already exists.

Perhaps the point is to show you what could.

What Makes Somewhere Worth Going To?    

I work in sound.

So when I enter a room, I hear it before I understand it.

Glasses touching tables.

Music underneath conversation.

Two people talking over each other because they've both become excited about the same thing.

The sudden quiet when somebody takes the microphone.

A laugh from somewhere you can't see.

Chairs moving.

Footsteps.

A door opening.

Every room has a rhythm.

And you can usually tell when something changes.

Friendly Fridays was never supposed to work because we found sufficiently interesting things to put on a stage.

The stage helps.

The music helps.

Food definitely helps.

And I'm not turning down a good DJ for philosophical reasons. 😂

But none of those things answer the real question:

Why would somebody come back?

Not to the same event.

To the Village.

Why would somebody finish work on a Friday and think:

I could go there tonight.

Somebody might know my name.

Or learn it.

That's the part we've been trying to build.

The Programme Is Actually Quite Simple  

Every Friendly Fridays follows the same rhythm.

Different city.

Different people.

Same invitation.

You arrive.

You get yourself settled.

We open with an icebreaker - something simple enough to get people talking without making grown adults regret leaving their homes. 😂

Then comes the Travel Mixer.

A few minutes.

One person.

Then another.

Then another.

Where have you travelled?

Where do you want to go?

What brought you here?

What are you drinking?

Have you been before?

Nothing revolutionary.

Except sometimes ordinary conversation does something extraordinary.

It gives you one person in the room you know.

Then 7:30 comes.

The main event begins.

This month, in the world we're writing, that's Open Mic Night.

A microphone.

Music.

Poetry.

Stories.

Comedy.

Somebody performing who absolutely told everyone at six o'clock that they weren't performing.

You know the type. 😂

But here's the important part.

Friendly Fridays doesn't begin when somebody takes the microphone.

It begins much earlier.

It begins when somebody moves over.

Thirty-Two Rooms     

This is where the future gets interesting.

In the Global Village Stories Universe, there are 32 Tribal Lounges.

Think about that for a minute.

Once a month, the same Friendly Fridays programme moving through thirty-two different rooms.

London.

Leicester.

Birmingham.

Paris.

Lisbon.

Nairobi.

And beyond.

The details belong to the city.

The people do too.

Paris should feel like Paris.

Nairobi shouldn't behave like Leicester with different weather.

The music changes.

The conversations change.

The food changes.

The accents around the room change.

The people hosting you understand their city because it is their city.

But the invitation stays the same.

Come in.

Meet somebody.

Listen.

Share something if you want to.

That's the Village I'm interested in.

Not thirty-two identical buildings.

Thirty-two places where somebody can walk through a door and discover they aren't quite as far from community as they thought.

But That Isn't Where We Are Yet      

And this is the part I don't want us pretending about.

The Village in the stories has had twenty years to become what it is.

We haven't.

We're at the beginning.

Right now, the real-world Leicester Tribal Lounge is the African Caribbean Centre.

We're building Friendly Fridays there as the real-world Village grows.

This month's Leicester Open Mic Night isn't going ahead.

There isn't a secret Paris event replacing it in real life.

Paris belongs to the story.

But there's a reason we're telling that story.

Because the books let us ask a very interesting question:

What could this become if we actually kept building it?

Twenty years into the fictional Tribe, Friendly Fridays is normal.

Tribal Lounges are normal.

Members moving between cities and finding community there is normal.

Nobody living inside that world has to imagine the beginning.

We do.

Because we're standing in it.

A website.

A book.

A real Tribal Lounge in Leicester.

Friendly Fridays when we can make them happen.

Seasonal journeys.

The first members choosing to come through the door.

It doesn't look like the Village in the books yet.

Of course it doesn't.

That's what twenty years of story are for.

What If You Didn't Just Read the Village?       

What if you entered it?

Autumn Membership is now open across all three Tribe membership tiers:

Local.Global.Legacy.

And we're adding something special for our founding membership period. 

Members who join during Autumn Membership will have the opportunity to inspire a recurring character within the Global Village Stories Universe.

We're calling it the Founding Character Programme.

We'll design the character visually.

You'll give us some of the background you'd like us to understand - heritage, interests, personality, places that matter to them and pieces of the story you'd like us to consider.

Then we do what storytellers do.

We build them into the world.

Not necessarily as the hero.

Not necessarily immediately.

Maybe they're sitting at the Travel Mixer in Paris.

Maybe somebody recognises them in Nairobi.

Maybe they're travelling on a Hero Tour.

Maybe Zaire hears them arguing about music at the bar.

Maybe they appear for three chapters and disappear for six months before walking through another Tribal Lounge door.

Because recurring characters don't need to stand in the centre of every story.

They need somewhere in the Village to belong.

And once that character enters the Global Village Stories Universe, they become part of its continuing story - even if the membership that originally inspired them later ends.

Your membership opens the door.

The character's story may continue after that.

And Your Village Depends on Where You Are   

This part matters.

Membership is global.

Even Local Membership doesn't mean you have to live in Leicester.

If you're joining us from France, you'll belong to the Tribal Lounge serving your area.

If that's Paris, Paris becomes your Lounge.

If you're in Kenya, the same principle applies.

Your place in the Village should reflect where you actually belong.

Because you know something we don't.

You know the café people actually sit in.

The neighbourhood outsiders misunderstand.

The expression everybody uses.

The food somebody's grandmother would put on the table.

The song that changes the atmosphere at a gathering.

The shortcut.

The history.

The thing an AI search or travel guide is never going to understand quite the way somebody who belongs there understands it.

That's how the fictional Village becomes richer.

Not by pretending we already know the whole world.

By allowing more of the world into the room.

The Character Is Yours to Inspire. The Story Remains Ours to Tell.    

I want to make one thing clear because this programme is going to work best if everybody understands the arrangement from the beginning.

Becoming a Founding Character doesn't give a member creative control over Global Village Stories.

You help us understand the person entering the Village.

We create and manage the character.

Once created for the Global Village Stories Universe, that fictional character becomes part of the Tribe of Travelers' story world.

Their storyline may change.

They may grow.

Move.

Fall in love.

Fall out with somebody.

Travel.

Disappear for a while.

Come back.

And yes...

one day a character could even die.

That's storytelling.

Membership gives you the extraordinary opportunity to help inspire somebody who enters the Village.

It doesn't give anybody the ability to determine what happens once they're living inside the story.

Because the Village has to remain a story.

Not thirty-two thousand people submitting script amendments. 😂

Why Am I Telling You This During Friendly Fridays?     

Because this is what Friendly Fridays was always supposed to solve.

Not:

What event can we put on this month?

But:

How do we give people somewhere to keep meeting?

The microphone changes.

One month it's Open Mic Night.

Another month it'll be something completely different.

Cities change.

People travel.

Sometimes your nearest Lounge might be quiet.

That's where the voiceover for this week's episode keeps bringing me back:

The Village is bigger than one room.

That's the dream.

And membership is how we start building the real-world connections underneath it.

A member in Leicester knowing Birmingham is there.

A member in France knowing Paris is theirs.

Someone visiting another country and realising the Village already has a door there.

Someone walking into a room alone and hearing:

“You made it.”

Not because they're famous.

Not because they're performing.

Because somebody remembers them.

Sometimes There's Another Chair Waiting Somewhere Else     

This month's real Leicester Friendly Fridays isn't happening.

I wish it were.

But I'm not going to invent a crowd that doesn't exist to make this project look further along than it is.

Instead, I'm going to show you the crowd we're trying to build.

The Village in the stories has had twenty years to grow. 

Thirty-two Tribal Lounges.

Friendly Fridays every month.

People travelling between them.

Members carrying stories from one city into another.

A Paris Lounge shaped partly by people who actually know Paris.

A Nairobi Village informed by people who actually know Nairobi.

Places becoming more specific as the people who belong to them enter the story.

That's not where we are.

That's where we're going.

And maybe that's what makes somewhere worth going to.

Not that everything is already waiting for you.

Sometimes it's knowing your presence might help create what will be waiting for the person who comes after you.

🍂 Become a Founding Member This Autumn     

Registration is now open for Local, Global and Legacy Membership.

Join during the Autumn Membership period and you'll also have the opportunity to take part in our Founding Character Programme, inspiring a recurring character within the Global Village Stories Universe. 

Your membership also connects you to the wider Tribe, including access to When the Village Carries Home, membership benefits, future Friendly Fridays gatherings and priority access to selected Tribe journeys and Hero Tours.

Whether your nearest real-world gathering is active yet or not, you can still help us build the Village attached to your part of the world.

Join the Tribe →

See the Global Village Stories Universe →

Meet some of the people already inside the Global Village Stories Universe and see the kind of world your Founding Character could become part of.

We're not asking you to pretend the Village already exists.

We're asking whether you'd like to help us build it.

Because one day I'd like somebody to land in a city they've never visited before, open their phone and think:

I could go somewhere tonight where somebody might know my name.

Or learn it.

That's worth building.

Until the next rhythm finds us…

Keep the story alive.

Keep the culture moving.

Respect always,

Zaire 🪘🔥🌍

Regional Operations Officer & Soundspace Director | Global Village Stories