Tending Community Rhythms

Creating Space for Connections to Grow

Hello and welcome to the 3rd post of
Growing Digital Communities: A Gardener's Guide 🌱

An exploration for myself, and my fellow relational designers, as we tend our communities.

Every garden moves to natural rhythms—the daily arc of the sun, the monthly phases of the moon, the turning of seasons. This tempo is mirrored in human community patterns. While we may not always follow the sun's arc, we do develop our own characteristic beat - times of high engagement, periods of collaborative energy, and quieter moments of reflection.

These cycles aren't just background processes; they're the essence of life’s pace and purpose. Plants have evolved to follow these cadences—humans also thrive together when we discover and nurture our unique pulse.

In my previous explorations, I shared how communities grow like gardens and how squad-sized groups are vital for intimacy. Now, I’ll explore how creating intentional rhythms - while leaving room for spontaneity - provides the underlying structure that allows a collective to truly flourish. I’ll get into:

• how regularly scheduled gatherings are your best tool for forming foundational bonds across members

• navigating the tougher transitions: sunsetting a convening series or moving through a slower, regenerative time

• nurturing collective stewardship as the core of your community beat by embracing individual members’ unique interests and ideas

If you’re most curious about “Example Rhythms in Practice”, feel free to skip right to the end. I’ve pulled together common styles and cadences of gatherings I’ve personally seen work well.

Keep It Simple & Consistent

The foundation of a healthy collective is regular syncs - whether weekly, biweekly, or monthly. These consistent touchpoints are like the daily watering of your relationships, providing essential nourishment for growth and connection. They give members something reliable to orient around, creating a sense of continuity, belonging, and psychological safety.

It’s not just about timing, though - it's also about choreographing different types of gatherings over time. Community-wide convenings, like showcases and celebrations, create shared milestones and memory. Meanwhile, smaller touchpoints - squad meetings and spontaneous conversations - build relational depth that strengthen your foundation.

When finding your heartbeat, one of my go-to approaches is: start simple and stay consistent. Maybe host a weekly all-community call at the same time each week, or a monthly show-and-tell session.

There's a very practical benefit here - coordinating people across locations and time is one of the most challenging aspects of any social experience. The sheer effort required to align schedules and "herd cats" can't be overstated. Make it easy on yourself and your members by sticking with set times and places. When your group is young, don’t expect to nail the choreography immediately; it’s common to adjust the schedule as you find the beat.

Another essential aspect of recurring, invitational, and reliable convenings is they create a space of psychology safety. This is how relationships take root—repeated interactions, over time. People gradually getting to know one another and beginning to build trust. Here’s where the gardening metaphor gets especially interesting - sometimes the greatest vibrancy comes not from what’s planned, but from what’s entirely unexpected.

The most engaging and exciting experiences almost always emerge spontaneously from members themselves. One of the communities I tend is a practice and play space for fiddlers where a member copied a group practice structure and put her own spin on it with a focus on waltzes. She now regularly holds waltz sessions for her peers. On the gardening side, we didn’t see this coming, but we definitely embraced the opportunity when it popped up.

Building in Regular Reflection

When starting any new way of coming together, it’s important to build in regular reflection points. For example:

• A first-month check-in to assess format and timing

• Quarterly evaluations of impact and alignment

• End-of-season reflection on whether to continue, adapt, or conclude

• Documentation of what worked well (and what did not) for future reference

These semi-structured reflection periods help people organically find their form while simultaneously staying intentional. Over time, they also make it easier to recognize when a format has served its purpose and it’s ready to sunset, staying in touch with that natural community beat.

The Natural Ebb and Flow 

Just as gardens experience both seasonal inactivity and abundance, groups also go through cycles of high and low energy. The best community gardeners follow these ebbs and flows—looking for a sustainable pulse. They are keeping an eye out for when to start something new, close-out a long standing ritual to make room for a new one, or shake things up in some other way.

Let’s take a closer look at when it’s time to conclude a regular community experience and when to stay the course, navigating those slower ~in-between~ lulls.

The Completion of Seasons 

Gathering patterns don’t garner continuous excitement and energy forever and will eventually wind down. Signs to watch for when a gathering’s time is up and the community rhythm is evolving:

• Declining participation despite promotion

• The original purpose has been fulfilled

• Energy feels forced rather than flowing

• New needs have emerged

Instead of seeing these endings as failures, treat them as natural completions. With gardens, we celebrate a harvest rather than mourn the end of a growing season. Some ideas for how to recognize these cycles of rhythms:

• Explicitly celebrating what was achieved 

• Documenting lessons learned for future reference 

• Involving the community in creating new formats

Maintaining Vitality Through Low Periods

There is a distinction between when it’s time to sunset an initiative and when things are simply slowed down. Low periods are inevitable and even the down times can be valuable if approached mindfully. It’s like the winter season, which isn't simply a time of death; it’s also a time of essential rest and preparation. During these quieter seasons:

• Scale back frequency while maintaining consistency

• Use quieter times for reflection and planning

• Focus on nurturing core relationships

• Experiment with new formats in low-stakes ways

• Trust that energy will return with the next season

For squad-sized groups specifically, these lower-energy periods can be perfect for:

• Documenting learnings from recent projects

• Strengthening bonds through informal interactions

• Planning future initiatives without pressure to execute immediately

• Reorganizing based on members' shifting interests and capacities

Remember that these quieter phases often prepare the soil for future beginnings. Much important work happens below the surface during these times. Connections deepen and lessons integrate during dormant periods, and this nurtures the soil for the next season of growth.

Tending to Collective Stewardship Rhythms

As healthy communities evolve they move from centralized founder cultivation to shared stewardship across members. Similar to gardens, people (in this case members) develop their own patterns of growth and renewal in sync with the broader ecosystem. This evolution happens through:

• Members discovering and sharing facilitation practices that resonate with the culture

• The emergence of new gathering formats aligned with individually voiced needs and interests

• Informal mentorship as experienced members welcome and guide newcomers

• Collective wisdom about what helps the community flourish

What I’m trying to express here is: you as the community gardener don’t have to lead and do everything! You want to share the group’s stewardship with others. This transition into a collaborative tending enriches the whole ecosystem. With community maturity, the leadership responsibility distributes and each member contributes their unique strengths and perspectives. We become stronger through distributed leadership and diverse perspectives.

Healthy collective rhythms often show through:

• Consistent, authentic engagement across different types of gatherings

• Spontaneous connections flowering between scheduled events

• New formats emerging organically from member interests

• A rotation of hosting and facilitation roles

• Flexible adaptation when existing patterns need refreshing

As the community gardener, you’re always keeping an eye out for how your group is evolving, how its rhythm is changing. What nurtures growth in one phase might need adjustment in another. The beauty lies in how the group senses and responds to these changing needs, each member contributing to the shared vitality. The best communal leaders share their sensitivity in noticing these patterns, supporting and amplifying others.

The Root System of Your Community

These rhythms are your root system - a woven, relational, and unseen structure that supports your collective. A garden's root network creates pathways for nutrients and connection between plants; good community rhythm creates socio-cultural infrastructure for relationships to flourish and natural developmental patterns to emerge.

The best communities lean into:

• the simplicity of regularly schedule gatherings

• natural ebbs and flows of slower times in the collective

• recognizing when to conclude an ongoing ritual

• shared group stewardship by embracing members’ interests and ideas

Remember - you're not building a machine with rigid schedules, you're cultivating a living system with its own cadences. As a gardener, you’re tending to the communal root system. Your role is to listen deeply, support what wants to grow, and help maintain the conditions where both the planned and spontaneous are welcomed.

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I'd love to hear about the rhythms in your communities. What gathering patterns have you found most nourishing? How do you balance structure and spontaneity? Leave a note below👇

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Example Rhythms in Practice

In my years of tending digital spaces, I’ve observed various gathering patterns take root. Listed below are some proven practices I've seen flourish. I share these examples not as a template to follow, but as illustrations of how different rhythms might emerge and serve their communities.

Weekly & bi-weekly sessions as your heartbeat

• Open Forum Discussions: Lightly facilitated dialogue where I've watched members naturally surface and explore important topics in a spirit of shared curiosity

• Show & Tell Thursdays: Regular showcases as moments for celebrating completed works, sharing works-in-progress, and discovering unexpected collaborations

• Potluck Practice Fridays: Similar to a communal study hall, these sessions offer quiet companionship as members bring their own work and share the creative energy

Monthly touchpoints to form deeper roots

• Retrospectives: I’ve found regular reflection helps communities notice patterns, celebrate victories, and gently adjust course together

• Performance Practice Sessions: The "No Fear Fiddle" gatherings emerged as a supportive way for members to build confidence with peers

Seasonal cycle

• Annual Visioning Sessions: Kicking off the new year by weaving individual hopes with collective dreams, and in the process creating a shared map for the journey ahead

• Holiday Times: Supportive rituals to hold both celebration and complexity around cultural moments (navigating family relationships isn’t always easy! community support can definitely help)

• Cohort Transitions: Marking the beginning and completion of structured learning journeys by honoring the fresh energy of new members and the wisdom of those graduating

Emergent spaces as a sign of health

• Skill-Sharing Workshops: I've seen members experiment with teaching formats while sharing expertise, for example a workshop on articulating values

• Collaborative Brainstorms: Sometimes a casual conversation sparks a session exploring new group possibilities like panel discussions or in-person get-togethers

• Informal & Impromptu Meetups: The most surprising connections often form in simple, impromptu spontaneous gatherings where a few people decide now’s a great time to meet

Each of these rhythms serves a distinct purpose in the ecosystem, from building skills and confidence to fostering innovation and deepening relationships. What matters isn't replicating these exact patterns, but finding the tempo for your own community garden to thrive.

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