01
DEAP
Civic Strategy + Community Engagement
Move the decision →
DEAP × BWNC Institute × OAW
From community concern to collective action.
Civic Commons turns civic education, public decision-making and community participation into something people can experience, discuss and practice together.
Experience how community power gets built.
- Listen.
- Choose.
- Organize.
- Participate.
The participation gap
Civic engagement shouldn’t be something people only hear about.
Elections, public budgets, policies and community decisions shape everyday life, but the process can feel distant, complicated or inaccessible.
Civic Commons creates environments where people can practice civic participation before the stakes are real — exploring an issue, hearing different perspectives, weighing tradeoffs and deciding what they would do.
Neighbors, side by side
Public rooms, real talk
Everyday civic spaces
Practice before the stakes
We turn civic engagement from information into participation.
Built through collaboration
Civic strategy. Community voice. Immersive technology. One shared platform.
Civic Commons is one operating model made of four working parts. Each partner carries a piece of how a community moves from concern to action.
02
BWNC Institute
Community Voice + Cultural Connection
03
OAW
Immersive Experience + Platform Innovation
04
ResetXR
Immersive Experience Engine
Different strengths. Shared mission. More meaningful civic participation.
One platform
Civic Commons is not one experience. It is a connected system.
Four modules, one loop. Each one hands a person to the next, so attention becomes participation and participation becomes a habit.
01
Civic Commons Experiences
Immersive scenarios where people explore a real community issue and practice the decision before the stakes are real.
- Learn
- Explore
- Decide
02
Civic Commons LIVE
Facilitated rooms and activations where the experience turns into conversation, testimony and next steps.
- Experience
- Speak
- Act
03
Civic Commons Passport
A record of participation that follows a person from one civic moment to the next, and keeps them coming back.
- Join
- Participate
- Earn
- Repeat
04
Civic Commons Impact
What people chose, what they said and what changed — reported back to organizers and the community.
- Measure
- Learn
- Improve
Module 01 in practice — Civic Commons Experiences
See Civic Commons in action
Step inside the Maple Square experience.
Our public beta debuted at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s 55th Annual Legislative Conference in Washington, D.C.
The activation gets someone’s attention. The platform keeps them engaged.
Public beta · Washington, D.C.
We built it. Then we put it in front of people.
Civic Commons public beta at CBCF’s Annual Legislative Conference • Washington, D.C. • September 2026
50+
Beta participants
2 Days
Live activation
1 Public Beta
Built to scale
Civic Commons made its public beta debut in Washington, D.C. during the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s 55th Annual Legislative Conference. Across two activation days, 50+ participants stepped inside the experience, made civic decisions and continued the conversation through facilitated engagement and community media.
DEAP × ResetXR × BWNC Institute
Produced by OAW × BWNC
We understand how hard meaningful community engagement can be.
You're working hard to make sure your community is heard.
But creating participation that feels meaningful, accessible, and connected to actual decisions isn't easy.
Especially when the people you serve have different experiences, priorities, and ideas about what should happen next.
People care about different things.
A young person may see recreation.
A caregiver may see safety.
An older or disabled resident may see accessibility.
A community steward may see maintenance and accountability.
Every need can be legitimate.
The challenge isn't deciding whose needs matter. They all do.
Resources are limited.
Not every priority can happen at once. Communities have to understand the tradeoffs behind public decisions.
Traditional engagement can still feel passive.
Meetings, surveys, presentations, and public comment can collect input without always helping people understand how their voice connects to what happens next.
Different voices still have to move forward together.
Organizations need a way to help people listen across differences, understand competing priorities, and participate in building something shared.
You shouldn't have to choose between informing your community and meaningfully involving them.
People affected by community decisions deserve a meaningful opportunity to understand how those decisions work—and organizations deserve better tools for helping them participate.
What if people could experience the decision before being asked to navigate it?
There's a better way to help people participate.
Don't just explain civic engagement. Let people experience it.
Civic Commons gives organizations an immersive way to help people practice the skills meaningful participation requires.
Instead of simply hearing about a public issue, participants step inside it.
They encounter different perspectives, make choices with limited resources, organize around shared priorities, and experience how participation connects to public decisions.
- 01
LISTEN
Understand the people behind the priorities.
Start with one concern, then hear from neighbors whose experiences and needs may be different from your own.
- 02
CHOOSE
Make real tradeoffs.
Work with limited resources and decide what should happen first, what waits, and what cannot be forgotten.
- 03
ORGANIZE
Turn priorities into shared support.
Find common ground, protect shared commitments, and build something others are willing to stand behind.
- 04
PARTICIPATE
Experience how ideas move forward.
Take those priorities into the civic process and see how participation, representation, decisions, and accountability connect.
Listen. Choose. Organize. Participate.
Civic Commons turns civic engagement into something communities can experience—not just something they're told about.
Built from OAW's ResetXR activation model 
The model behind Civic Commons has already supported immersive community-development experiences reaching:
- People reached
- 1,000+
- Partner organizations
- 20+
- Activations delivered
- 50+
people
partner community organizations
immersive civic activations
Photos from OAW ResetXR activations: participants using headsets at community events, schools, and libraries.
Civic Commons expands that foundation into a reusable civic-learning platform designed for immersive activations, web experiences, and community-specific scenarios.
Flagship Civic Commons Experience 01 · Scenario simulation
Same community. Same budget. Different priorities.
Maple Square is the first flagship Civic Commons Experience — one neighborhood park, one limited budget, and three legitimate futures. Participants step inside the decision instead of just hearing about it.
FUTURE 01
Youth & Recreation
Invest more deeply in safe youth recreation, the court, lighting, and gathering space. Other urgent needs still receive attention, with clear commitments for what happens next.
FUTURE 02
Family & Safety
Prioritize playground safety, sanitation, and spaces families can confidently use. Youth recreation and accessibility remain part of the larger community commitment.
FUTURE 03
Access & Community
Prioritize connected accessible routes, entrances, seating, and shared community space. Recreation remains part of the plan rather than disappearing from the conversation.
Communities have limited resources, competing priorities, and people with different lived experiences. Civic Commons makes those tradeoffs visible. The transformation isn't that everyone suddenly agrees. It's that people learn how to listen, negotiate, make choices, establish shared commitments, and build enough organized support to move something forward.
Participant transformation
Before
"I care about what happens in my community, but I'm not sure how my voice becomes action."
After
"I understand how my concern can connect with other people's priorities and become part of collective action."
Organization transformation
Before
You're struggling to turn community concern and civic interest into meaningful, understandable participation.
After
You can confidently deploy immersive civic experiences that help people understand the process, hear one another, make choices together, and see how collective participation can influence what happens next.
Build a more informed, engaged, and civically confident community.
And give your organization a repeatable engagement model for turning:
- Community concern
- Shared priorities
- Meaningful participation
- Collective action
Roughly 8 minutes. No account required.
Beyond the ballot · Civic participation
Voting is a moment. Civic power is a process.
Election cycles are short. The decisions that shape a neighborhood keep going long after the polls close.
- 01Preparation & context
Before the Vote
Ballot measures, local budgets and board races get demystified. People explore the tradeoffs and hear neighborhood perspectives before the stakes are final.
Explore the issues before the stakes are final.
- 02Informed choice
At the Decision
Past the noise and the fatigue, the decision becomes deliberate — a clear expression of personal and community priorities.
Decide with clarity, not guesswork.
- 03Accountability & action
After Election Day
The work continues once votes are counted: tracking what gets implemented, showing up to public hearings and organizing with neighbors.
Turn collective votes into sustained power.
Non-partisan by design
Built to inform. Not influence.
Civic Commons does not exist to tell participants what to think or who to support. We build experiences that help people better understand the process, examine perspectives and make their own informed decisions.
Civic Commons LIVE · Physical activation hub
Voice + Experience + Action.
A civic engagement hub inside your event.
Experience→Speak→Act
Experience it. Talk about it. Act on it.
Speak01
Civic Voice Studio
On-site recording, community interviews and cultural commentary. What people felt inside the experience becomes media the community can hear.
- Live interviews
- Community media
- Cultural commentary
Experience02
Immersive Activation Booth
The physical dome where visitors step inside a civic scenario, weigh the tradeoffs and make a decision of their own.
- Guided onboarding
- ~8 minute run
- Decision captured
Act03
Civic Action + Impact Layer
Facilitated conversation right after the headset comes off — plus sign-ups, follow-up and a record of what the room decided together.
- Facilitated debrief
- Follow-up sign-up
- Shared results
The Civic Commons Experience
DEAP × ResetXR × BWNC Institute
Produced by OAW × BWNC
How it works
Curiosity should lead somewhere.
From physical participation, to conversation, to a digital civic life that keeps going after the event ends.
- 01
Enter
A question, issue or experience gets your attention.
- 02
Experience
Step inside a civic scenario and explore the perspectives and tradeoffs.
- 03
Speak
Share what you think and hear how others see the issue.
- 04
Act
Connect with credible resources and find a meaningful next action.
Next actions
Find your meetingLocal org directoryPublic comment guide - 05
Stay Engaged
Continue through future experiences, civic missions, check-ins and participation opportunities.
Civic Passport
LV. 23 civic missions completed
EnterExperienceSpeakActStay Engaged
After the activation
The experience should be the beginning, not the end.
Civic Commons is being designed to reconnect participants with meaningful opportunities to stay involved after an activation.
Civic Commons Passport
In developmentThrough the evolving Civic Commons Passport, participants can continue their civic journey through follow-up questions, verified participation, community missions and new experiences.
The engagement loop
ExperienceJoinParticipateVerifyEarnRepeat
Follow-up questions
A short check-in after the activation captures what stayed with people.
Verified participation
A record of what someone actually showed up for, not just what they clicked.
Community missions
Small, credible next actions offered by trusted local partners.
New experiences
Future scenarios that pick up where the last one left off.
For community partners
For community partners, this creates an opportunity to measure more than attendance.
It creates a pathway toward understanding what people learned, what they did next and whether participation continued.
Bring Civic Commons to your community
Meet people where civic life is already happening.
Civic Commons is designed to work inside the institutions, events and cultural spaces where communities already gather.
01
Conferences + Major Events
Create a destination for participation, conversation and content.
02
Cities + Public Institutions
Make public processes easier to understand and engage with.
03
Schools + Universities
Give students experiential ways to understand civic participation.
Built for the places where communities already gather.
04
Community + Nonprofit Organizations
Turn civic education into facilitated community engagement.
05
Foundations + Corporate Sponsors
Support measurable civic participation at community and national scale.
06
Media + Cultural Platforms
Combine community voice, storytelling and real-world participation.
Build the next Civic Commons with us
Bring community voice, immersive participation and civic action together.
We're working with organizations, institutions, sponsors and event partners ready to explore new ways of engaging communities in the decisions shaping their future.
Bring Civic Commons to your community, event or institution — or help us scale the platform into new cities and new civic experiences.
Prototyped live in Washington, D.C. during CBC 2026.