Somewhere like home.

For a long time, when thinking of ‘home’ what came to my mind was a place. The space, a city, an apartment in which one resides. Something fixed and geographical. If we are fortunate, it is also somewhere that offers a sense of safety, familiarity, of belonging: not just an address but a place of memory, habits and relationships that shape who we are.

Over the past few years, I have lived and worked across New Zealand, Italy, and for periods of time, elsewhere in Europe. I have helped build, and worked on, projects in galleries, foundations, on film sets and temporary cultural spaces.

Living and working in places that I often occupied for too brief a time for that sense of belonging to grow, I find myself returning to the same question:

What actually makes somewhere feel like home?

Increasingly I think that the answer has less to do with ownership or permanence than with participation.

A home is not somewhere we simply inhabit. It is not where we are. It is something that we do, that we practice. It is created through the small rituals that shape our days: the neighbours we greet each day, the familiar sounds we recognise, the places nearby that we frequent, the dinners shared with friends, our acts of self-care.

Even the places themselves become expressions of identity. How we choose to furnish the space itself, what art we hang in it, the books we display, which colour we paint its walls all communicate something about who we are and how we want to live.

In a sense, making a home is a continuous, inherently creative, process.

This way of thinking has also changed how I approach cultural work. Increasingly, I find myself less interested in creating spaces that people simply pass through than in creating spaces they can momentarily inhabit: places that invite participation, conversation and, however fleetingly, a sense of belonging.

If that is true, perhaps spaces in which culture and creativity reside – galleries, theatres, museums, cinemas, libraries, and even public spaces – become homes in their own right.

Reflecting on the most memorable exhibitions, events and cultural happenings over the last few years, I realise that they were never mere presentations of content. They were places that invited participation rather than passive observation. They created moments of encounter: with unfamiliar ideas, with other people, and sometimes with different versions of ourselves.

We entered as visitors, but left having formed a temporary community.

Perhaps this is one of the quiet yet profound functions of culture. Not merely to expose us to something new, but to cultivate this sense of belonging where none previously existed, to make us feel, at least briefly, at home in unfamiliar territory.

Perhaps home is not ultimately where we are. Perhaps it is what we create together.