Communitas: Building Community through Leisure and Collective Joy

Relationships and belonging are fundamental needs for well-being. At the same time, our culture is becoming increasingly individualistic and loneliness is pervasive. Our traditional community and relational frameworks, such as religious institutions and associations, are also diminishing. This capstone explores leisure as a possible pathway for building social capital and community well-being. We will look at why leisure activities based in recreation, play and the humanities have the capacity to build community and enduring connections with others, while also having individual well-being benefits. This capstone features some exemplary groups that utilize leisure activities and have built strong communities through positive psychology constructs such as hive psychology, self-efficacy, collective effervescence, mattering, resilience and belonging. We will explore opportunities to overlap the fields of positive psychology and leisure in both research and application. We will remind ourselves that joy and belonging are powerful forces and even more powerful when they come together.