What If One of the People We Haven't Met Yet Is You?

A little hello from the studio… 🎨🌿✨

There is an unfinished sketch sitting open on the table in front of me.

I had every intention of finishing it.

Then the table beside mine became more interesting.

Four people.

A conversation I wasn't part of.

Someone laughing hard enough to make everybody else laugh with them. 

So I put my pencil down.

There is colour on the page.There is shape.There are places where I know exactly what belongs.

And then there are the empty parts.

Those are usually the parts people worry about.

I don't.

An empty space in a painting doesn't necessarily mean something is missing.

Sometimes it simply means I haven't met what belongs there yet.

And sitting here in Leicester Tribal Lounge, watching people find one another, I think perhaps communities work that way too.

I've been thinking about that while watching our Village grow.

The Village around me is filled with people.

Members. Hosts. Travellers. Neighbours.

The person who always arrives early. The one who somehow knows everybody.

The one who walks through the door knowing nobody at all.

I know some of their names.

Others I only recognise by the way they occupy a room.

And every so often I find myself wondering about something rather peculiar:

from where you're standing, some of these people haven't arrived yet.

You Are Building What I Already Know     

There is something rather strange about speaking to you from here.

I can walk into Paris Tribal Lounge on a Friday evening.

I can watch a Host pull another chair towards a crowded table.

I can hear someone calling across the room to a member who has just arrived.

I can travel to Nairobi. Birmingham. Lisbon.

These places are ordinary to us now.

But I understand they aren't ordinary where you are.

Not yet.

You are still building towards them.

And perhaps that is why I've been thinking about the unfinished sketch in front of me.

Because from where I stand, I can see the picture.

From where you stand, some of the people haven't been painted in yet.

So We're Trying Something We've Never Done Before    

There is a strange stage in every painting when the first marks begin determining what becomes possible later.

Move one line and the balance changes.

Introduce one colour and suddenly another colour makes sense beside it.

People can do that to a community too.

So this Autumn, we're opening something new.

Anyone who registers for Tribe of Travelers membership - Local, Global or Legacy - will have the opportunity to join our new Founding Character Programme.

It is a small doorway between the Tribe you're building now and the Global Village I already know.

If you choose to participate, we'll ask you to tell us about the character you would like to inspire.

Not every detail.

Just enough for us to begin seeing them.

Where they're from.

Something about their background.

Their personality.

What matters to them.

The little details that make a person feel less like a name written on a page and more like somebody who might actually walk through a door.

Then we'll create them visually and begin finding their place in the Global Village Stories Universe.

And place matters.

Because these characters don't simply float around the Village.

They belong somewhere.

A Founding Character connected to a member in France would become part of Paris Tribal Lounge, unless another Tribal Lounge was geographically closer to where that member actually lives.

Someone in Kenya might belong to Nairobi.

Someone in the Midlands might find themselves connected to Leicester, Birmingham or whichever Lounge is nearest.

The geography of the fictional Village begins responding, ever so slightly, to the geography of the real people helping us build it.

I find that rather beautiful.

Your Character Is Inspired By You.

Their Story Belongs to the Village.    

There is one distinction I want to make carefully.

Your Founding Character can begin with you.

But they are not you.

And once they enter the Global Village Stories Universe, their story needs room to breathe.

You might give us their beginnings.

Their heritage.

Their personality.

Perhaps something you have always wanted to see reflected in a character.

We will listen.

Then our job is to turn those beginnings into someone who can live naturally inside the stories.

That means membership does not give creative control over what happens to the character.

You aren't purchasing a storyline.

You won't decide which books they appear in or what other characters do around them.

Their role might be small at first.

They may appear at Friendly Fridays.

Take a journey.

Know a Host.

Sit at a table with someone who becomes important later.

Disappear for a while.

Return somewhere completely unexpected.

And because the character becomes part of the Global Village Stories Universe, their story may continue even if the membership that helped inspire them eventually comes to an end.

I think it has to work that way.

Characters need the same thing paintings need.

Enough structure to hold them.

And enough freedom to become something you couldn't see at the beginning.

Imagine Paris Differently    

If you were with Zaire yesterday, then you've already seen what I mean.

Paris Tribal Lounge.

Friendly Fridays.

Open Mic Night.

To Zaire, it was simply Friday evening in Paris.

But I know you were seeing something else.

You were looking at a place your Tribe hasn't built yet.

Look again at the people around those tables.

Some have names already.

Some don't.

And that is where your part of this becomes rather beautiful.

Imagine somebody in France joins the Tribe this Autumn and chooses to take part in the Founding Character Programme.

We learn a little about the character they would like to inspire.

We create them.

And because that member lives closest to Paris Tribal Lounge, Paris becomes their character's home within the Village.

Perhaps we don't meet them immediately.

Perhaps months from now, Zaire returns to Paris.

And there they are.

Sitting near the stage.

Talking to the Lead Host.

Perhaps somebody calls their name from another table.

A tiny detail.

Except it wouldn't be tiny anymore.

Because one of the people who might once have remained somewhere in the background now has a name.

A history.

A place in the Village.

And twenty years earlier, outside these pages, there would be a real person who helped us discover them.

Membership Can Begin Anywhere   

This is also why I hope nobody reads Local Membership and assumes it means local to Leicester.

It doesn't.

It means local to your part of the Village.

You can join us from France.

Kenya.

Portugal.

America.

Somewhere we haven't visited yet.

Today, some of those places exist more fully inside Global Village Stories than they do within the physical Tribe.

That's simply where we are.

But people change the texture of places.

If somebody joins from France, something changes on your side of the story.

Not because one membership suddenly creates a functioning Tribal Lounge.

It doesn't.

But the real Tribe now knows somebody there.

Somebody who knows things you might not.

How their neighbourhood actually feels.

Where people gather.

What visitors misunderstand.

What food tastes like when it isn't being described by somebody who found it through research.

What belongs on the wall.

What absolutely would not belong on the wall.

Those things matter to me.

I've spent my life trying to create work that reflects communities rather than decorating them. So perhaps I understand why the people building your side of the Village need that too. 

The more real people who join from different places, the less your side of the Village has to imagine those places from a distance.

And perhaps, over time, something else happens.

One member becomes several.

Several become enough for a gathering.

A gathering creates relationships.

Relationships make other things possible.

A Host.

A Friendly Fridays.

One day, perhaps, a Tribal Lounge.

I can't tell you when that happens.

I only know what it looks like from here when it does.

The View Is Different From Here     

There are two versions of this Village.

Not for me.

For you.

There is the Tribe you know now.

Still small.

Still finding its people.

Trying things. Changing things. Learning what works.

And then there is the one you've been visiting with us.

Mine.

Twenty years further along the road.

I can sit in the rooms you're still imagining.

I know Hosts you haven't hired.

I've watched friendships grow between people who, from where you're standing, haven't even met.

And there are names in my world that haven't been written into yours yet.

That's where the Founding Character Programme becomes interesting.

Because for this founding period, someone can join the Tribe where you are...

and leave a trace in the Village where I am.

Your membership belongs to 2026.

Your Founding Character belongs to the story.

And somewhere between the two, a person who didn't exist before begins to have a name.

🍂 Autumn Membership Is Open    

Autumn Membership registration is open across all three membership tiers.

Local Membership is seasonal.

Global Membership is annual.

Legacy Membership is annual and supports the longer-term building of the Village at our highest membership level.

And during this founding period, members across all three tiers can choose to take part in the Founding Character Programme.

You'll receive access to the book.

You'll become part of the real Tribe being built today.

And if you choose to participate in the programme, we'll begin creating the character that connects your membership to the fictional Village you've been visiting inside these pages.

This particular opportunity won't always belong to every tier.

As the Village grows, new Founding Character creation will become a Legacy Membership privilege.

But beginnings are different.

Beginnings are when you can still see the pencil marks.

When the paint hasn't dried.

When the people who arrive don't simply enter what already exists.

They leave something behind.

JOIN THE TRIBE THIS AUTUMN → 

🎨 Continue the Conversation    

The sketch in front of me is still unfinished.

I've stopped trying to decide what belongs in every empty space.

Experience has taught me better than that.

Sometimes you have to live with a blank area for a while.

Walk past it.

Notice it in different light.

Allow the rest of the picture to grow around it.

And then one day something arrives and you realise:

Oh.

That's what was waiting there.

I wonder if communities work the same way.

There are people missing from the Global Village because we haven't met them yet.

Names that haven't been written.

Friendships that haven't happened.

Cities we haven't learned properly.

Journeys nobody has taken.

Characters standing somewhere beyond the edge of the page, waiting for us to discover where they belong.

Perhaps one of them begins with you.

Keep creating beauty in the people around you.

–Maya 🎨🌿✨