Welcome to your Change Lab dashboard — your central hub for civic tools, local impact, and connection. Whether you’re dipping your toe in or doubling down on change, this is the space to begin, grow, and organize your momentum.
Choose from four Engagement Levels that meet you where you are — from getting curious to organizing for impact. Explore eleven civic Pathways rooted in what matters: food, housing, justice, education, systems change, belonging, and more.
Use the Content Types to filter by what moves you: stories, events, toolkits, podcasts, books, partners, and more. The control panels on the sides help you navigate, explore, and plug in.
Research Resource: Weaving the Dream
This 2025 report from More in Common’s Beacon Project explores how Americans across political, racial, and generational lines share a belief in “morally directed agency”—the idea that individuals have both the right and responsibility to improve their lives and contribute to their communities. Drawing on surveys of over 60,000 people and in-depth interviews, the report reveals that most Americans value personal agency alongside a desire for systems that provide opportunity. It proposes a unifying civic vision rooted in empowerment, shared purpose, and mutual obligation.
Do you actually know what affordable housing is?
When most people say they want more “affordable housing,” they usually mean housing that more people can afford. But within policy and development spaces, that phrase carries technical definitions—often involving things like LIHTC, deed restrictions, or income thresholds that many outside the field have never heard of.
The City We Make Together: City Design and Participatory Culture
This book reframes city-making as a collaborative cultural process—shaped by stories, rituals, and relationships, not just bricks and regulations. It offers a vocabulary and set of practices for embedding empathy, pluralism, and public imagination into civic infrastructure, directly aligning with The Change Lab’s mission of building social cohesion and systemic change from the ground up.
Changing Work
In an era of political polarization and economic precarity, Changing Work offers a hopeful and inclusive vision of what work could be. By listening deeply and amplifying voices often left out of policy debates, they help shape a future of work that centers dignity, equity, and democracy.
We’re a brand new organization focused on connection, civic participation, and shared understanding. This is our temporary website while we build out a full online platform to better serve our community. In the meantime, we’d love your support and input as we grow. You can support our work or schedule a conversation to learn more and get involved.