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Social impact research, design, and learning

Spaces where people feel seen, valued, heard, and able to thrive.

Homeplace Institute is a social impact research, design, and learning organization committed to helping communities and organizations create spaces where people feel seen, valued, heard, and able to thrive.

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About

Meaningful change should be created with communities, not simply for them.

Grounded in research and shaped by community wisdom, Homeplace Institute brings together research and evaluation, organizational strategy, community engagement, professional learning, and innovative programming to reimagine the systems and spaces people experience every day.

Through research, evaluation, learning experiences, community-centered design, and signature initiatives, Homeplace Institute helps organizations listen differently, understand more deeply, and build more intentionally.

Homeplace is more than belonging. It is the intentional creation of spaces where identity is affirmed, relationships are nurtured, stories and histories are remembered, healing is possible, and people have the power to imagine and create something different.

In the spirit of bell hooks

Homeplace Institute is built in the spirit of bell hooks, who gave language to homeplace as a site of care, resistance, and possibility. Her work grounds our belief that we can build spaces and systems where Black people can exhale, exist fully as themselves, and be free to imagine what comes next.

bell hooks tribute image (4:5)

What We Do

Homeplace Institute's emerging work

01

Research & Evaluation

Community-centered program evaluation, qualitative research, policy analysis, needs assessments, and impact studies.

02

Strategy & Design

Helping organizations examine their systems, engage communities, and design programs and experiences that foster belonging and meaningful participation.

03

Learning & Facilitation

Professional learning, workshops, keynotes, retreats, facilitated conversations, and leadership experiences.

04

Community & Youth Initiatives

Designing and supporting culturally affirming experiences that center the knowledge, creativity, leadership, and lived experiences of young people and communities.

05

Public Scholarship

Translating research into accessible reports, frameworks, tools, curriculum, and resources that can move from scholarship into practice.

Our Approach

We listen before we design.

created with communities, not for them

  • We listen before we design.
  • We believe communities hold knowledge.
  • We believe belonging requires more than invitation. It requires changing the conditions of the space.
  • And we believe research should do more than describe problems. It should help communities imagine and build what comes next.

Flagship youth initiative

Black Girls R.E.A.D.

Restore. Envision. Affirm. Dream.

Culturally affirming literacy experiences designed with and for Black girls, born from doctoral research on Black girls, Black literature, identity, and homeplace.

Explore Black Girls R.E.A.D.
initiative photo — girls in session (5:4)
bookstore photo — readers together (5:4)

A signature initiative

Asè Book Boutique

The Official Bookstore of The Black Girl Brand: books, bookish apparel, literary services, and the Pages With My Homegirls book club. It is where the Institute's belief in homeplace takes retail and gathering form.

Enter the bookstore

Homeplace Compass™

Is your program, curriculum, or space actually building homeplace?

Answer five questions, one for each dimension, and get a real, specific read on where you stand.

Built on Jen Brooks' doctoral research: Belonging, (Re)membering, Placemaking, Healing, and Liberation.

What is homeplace?

“For those who dominate and oppress us... homeplace [is] where we can recover ourselves,” bell hooks wrote in 1990. In Jen Brooks' framework, homeplace is a space where Black girls are fully recognized, safe, and free to bring their whole selves — not a place they have to leave parts of themselves at the door to belong in.

The five dimensions you're being scored on

Belonging — being recognized, valued, and connected within a community that affirms your place in it.

(Re)membering — looking back to your roots, history, and lived experience to reclaim the knowledge and strength that shape who you are.

Placemaking — turning a space into somewhere that genuinely feels meaningful and safe.

Healing — processing pain and restoring balance, within yourself and in relation to others.

Liberation — choosing to resist unfair treatment and harmful ideas in order to live freely.

This is a quick read, not the full instrument.

Let's build something with your community

Tell us what you are trying to understand, change, or create. We will tell you honestly whether we are the right partner for it.