What actually makes a community strong?

Hypothesis

The Community Canvas is one of the best frameworks for anyone who brings people together — but it lives in PDFs. Would an interactive, spatial version make the framework easier to actually think with, rather than just read?

What we built

An interactive walk through the Community Canvas. Three layers — Identity, Experience, Structure — hold 17 themes, each framed as a key question. Identity sits at the centre as the beating heart; Experience wraps the top; Structure forms the base. Click any theme to explore its question, or step through all 17 with the arrow keys.

Learnings

• Spatial layout carries meaning the PDF can't: putting Identity physically at the centre communicates the framework's core claim before a single word is read.
• Framing each theme as a question (not a checklist) keeps people in a reflective mode — this matters for a tool meant for community builders, not auditors.
• Keyboard-stepping through all 17 themes turns the canvas into a guided session you can run with a group on a shared screen.

Log

• 2026-06-25 — Published at /experiments/community-canvas.
• 2026-06-20 — First interactive prototype of the three-layer layout.