What can you find in Priya Parker’s article below that you could apply to your congregational context?
Just find one thing and give it a try!
I particularly love the “Ask an Elder One Question” activity…
Author: Priya Parker, author of the Art of Gathering
A few months ago, I was sitting in a green room at the Brooklyn Public Library before my husband’s, Anand Giridharadas, conversation with Rebecca Solnit. I started chatting with the man next to me, and within minutes, I found myself riveted. His name was Jakab Orsós.
Orsós is the Vice President of Arts and Culture at the Brooklyn Public Library and the creative force behind some of the most inventive public programming in New York City right now. He’s the mind behind Night in the Library, an annual overnight festival where thousands of people descend on the library after dark for secret midnight lectures, tarot readers, philosophy talks, surprise performances, meditation sessions, and encounters that feel impossible to fully script. Somehow, despite drawing 8,000 people, it still feels intimate.
I invited Orsós onto GROUP LIFE for a BREAKDOWN to understand how he thinks. How do you design for the public without becoming generic? How do you create spaces that feel fun and transformative and joyful and warm instead of programmed? How do you build institutions that people actually want to belong to?
GROUP LIFE members can watch the full replay above.
Here are 10 ideas from our conversation about how to think like a public designer.
1. Design from potency. Most public programming begins with activities. Orsós begins with emotional charge. He thinks about his team meetings almost like therapy sessions. Everyone brings in the ideas, fears, obsessions, tensions, and questions they cannot stop thinking about. Then they pay attention to the energy in the room. Which idea makes people lean forward? Which idea makes everybody suddenly start talking at once? Which idea carries heat? “That’s the most reliable source of my life,” he said. “I existed in the cage of my emotions.” Part of what makes Night in the Library feel so alive is that it does not feel like it was built out of obligation. It feels built from curiosity, risk, fascination, and actual human longing. You can feel the difference immediately.
2. Use your humanity to shape your gathering. Orsós grew up in western Hungary as the only Roma family in his neighborhood. He knew early what it felt like to be outside the center of the room, to be watched, underestimated, or treated differently, he shared. That experience informs how he moves through public life now. When he arrived at the Brooklyn Public Library, he noticed that the children’s wings were full of immigrant nannies, mostly Caribbean women, sitting there every day with the children they cared for. The kids had programming. The parents had programming. But nobody was speaking to the nannies. So he created a fairy tale writing workshop for them. Orsós designs from recognition. He uses his own lived experience to see other people more clearly.
3. Build the thing you wish existed. The Brooklyn Public Library hosts an “Anti-Met Gala” every year called the People’s Ball. Thousands of New Yorkers show up dressed however they want and walk a catwalk inside the library the night before the actual Met Gala. Some people arrive in elaborate costumes, while others come in wrinkled suits and a massive smile. The crowd roars for all of them. Orsós does not frame the event as protest, but rather as an invitation. “You use the phenomenon (of the Met Gala) as inspiration,” he said. “And then you offer this thing with tenderness.” The People’s Ball is organized around joy and dignity, and giving ordinary people a place to feel celebrated.
4. Design for participation over spectatorship. Night in the Library doesn’t treat people as an audience. They’re participants. After sessions end, people are encouraged to follow speakers into the hallways and keep asking questions. The night spills out beyond the official programming. One of the most beloved experiences is called “Ask an Elder One Question.” The structure is simple: a table with two chairs, a bowl of fruit, and a wine glass. Young people line up after midnight to sit with an elder for fifteen minutes and ask one question about heartbreak, loneliness, breakups, sleep, family, or life. People are hungry for meaningful participation.
5. Let your gathering respond to the moment. Part of what makes Night in the Library feel so alive is that it responds to the world people are actually living in. The very first Night in the Library happened the weekend after Trump’s travel ban. It was freezing outside. 7,000+ people lined up around the block waiting to get into the library. At three in the morning, lawyers arrived directly from JFK Airport after helping travelers whose entry into the country had been suddenly denied. Every year, the programming shifts depending on what is happening culturally, politically, and emotionally. The gathering is in conversation with the moment.
6. Pay attention to where the energy already is. Orsós pays close attention to where people linger and which moments create momentum. He notices when audiences seem to be less engaged and which spaces feel most alive after midnight. One afternoon, he fell asleep in a park and woke to the sound of someone nearby playing the cello under the trees. He looked up at the canopy and thought: Why couldn’t parks become classrooms? That became University Open Air, a public learning series where immigrant scholars who cannot teach professionally lead classes outdoors in Brooklyn parks. Another night, when he was riding his bike and heard an interesting song blasting from a nearby car, he wondered: why not poetry instead? Soon, volunteers were biking around Brooklyn broadcasting poems through speakers strapped to their backs. Good public designers pay attention to where life is already happening and build from there.
7. Keep the structure simple. Most of the moving moments Orsós shared are structures that almost anyone could recreate. “Ask an Elder One Question” works because the invitation is clear and specific. Public life does not always need bigger production. Sometimes it needs more specificity.
8. Don’t wait for consensus. The first time Orsós pitched Night in the Library to the library president, he proposed a twelve-hour overnight event with simultaneous lectures, meditation sessions, screenings, live music, and philosophy talks running until dawn. “She looked at me,” he said. “She was like, ‘I’ll come back. That’s crazy,’ And I was like, yeah, it’s crazy, but I think it will work.” Good gatherers take risks. They try things that feel strange, ambitious, emotional, or a little impossible. Orsós shared how easy it is to abandon an idea the moment someone questions it: “If just one person says no,” he said, “you start to chicken out.” Night in the Library exists because he decided to try the crazy idea anyway.
9. Public life needs more joy. Brooklyn Public Library’s programming is magnetic because it feels genuinely joyful. There are tarot readers and philosophy lectures and poetry bikes and catwalks and midnight conversations with strangers. There is humor and surprise and play and delight and curiosity in the programming. Joy creates energy and participation, making people want to come back. People are hungry for that energy.
10. Design your gathering so it can continue after the official event ends. Conversations spill outward. Orsós understands that the best gatherings expand beyond the room itself. They ripple into relationships, memories, routines, and the way people move through a city afterward. Young people who first come after midnight start returning to the library during the year.
When I was growing up in Vienna, Virginia, my parents would take me to the public library on Saturdays. I still remember walking through the stacks and checking out books that would become part of my week. The library felt public, but it also somehow felt personal. It felt like a place that belonged to me.
Public institutions shape group life more than we often realize. They shape whether people feel welcome or invisible, whether they participate, and whether they feel connected to the people around them. Part of what makes Orsós’s work so powerful is that he keeps his attention on actual human beings, their emotions, curiosity, loneliness, humor, longing, and dignity, especially the people who are physically present but often overlooked.
Formation 