Philanthropy has long been shaped by urgency—responding to crisis, harm and need. But sustaining civic life also depends on what helps people gather, express themselves and remain open to one another.
Award-winning public space expert Jay Pitter describes public joy as a form of civic infrastructure that supports collective flourishing. Her newly released book Black Public Joy explores Black people’s public joy histories, sacred rituals, movements and contemporary expressions — situated within universal public space themes such as belonging and stewarding one another’s joy. This narrative, alongside her evolving public joy framework, creates an inflection point for philanthropic funders—particularly those investing in neighbourhood and place-based work—to consider how these ideas might inform more generative, community-centred funding approaches.
In this conversation with our President & CEO Sharon Avery, Pitter reflects on what this shift means for philanthropy—and how investing in public joy can strengthen the civic life funders are already committed to supporting.
You’ve described Black public joy—and public joy more broadly—as civic infrastructure that shapes our cultural and public spaces. How did you come to see joy this way and why does that shift matter for how philanthropy shows up?
When joy expands beyond individual emotion, self-care, or self-actualization and is framed as “public,” it inherently becomes civic. Historically, places like Nigerian markets and Greek agoras have functioned as democratic sites where civic life unfolds. Today, this remains true of the digital public square, cafes, parks, barbershops, and other gathering places.
These public spaces are where we negotiate differences, practice values, revel in self-expression, grieve histories, and celebrate culture. Public joy functions as infrastructure because, when present and flourishing, it serves as a scaffold for both delightful and even difficult civic expressions. For example, when navigating cultural differences or place-based trauma, public joy can help sustain openness, dignity, and respectful participation.
Philanthropy has historically viewed civic life through the lens of governance, social services and crisis response while concurrently treating public expressions of joy as incidental to programming or an aspiration to be met after addressing the serious systemic issues. In my book, I indicate that public joy is as urgent as justice and a legitimate type of infrastructure. Embracing both of these ideas will not only support philanthropic organizations in understanding joy as more than a fleeting feeling or feel-good report highlights; it will enhance the critically important work they are doing through their current civic lens.
Philanthropy has long been oriented around scarcity, crisis and trauma. Where do those frames fall short—and why does this moment call for investing not only in what’s broken, but in what helps communities gather, belong and thrive?
These frames fall short for several reasons. First, they often require people from historically marginalized communities to continually perform harm and victimhood in order to make a case for funding, inadvertently pitting communities against one another and entrenching a sense of hopelessness. This also reinforces power imbalances between funders and communities seeking support because there are rarely funding application prompts that invite applicants to celebrate their capacity, resilience, and distinct ways of knowing. And while critical, remaining in the crisis response cycle detracts from proactive and innovative ways of providing support to communities. Pivoting to a public joy lens is crucial at this time because many communities are exhausted from rehashing, resisting and demanding without resources for imagining, reveling and healing.
When you talk about expanding our understanding of public joy, what does that look like in practice? How can funders recognize and resource public joy in ways that are community-led, culturally grounded and built to last?
What this looks like in practice begins with funders reviewing their funding criteria, policies and evaluation metrics with the aim of expanding beyond need and harm alone toward also recognizing existing capacity, possibility and audacious aspiration. For example, philanthropists can:
- Explicitly invite applicants to share how public joy has helped to sustain their communities through crisis, where it shows up in shared spaces, and how it is fostered in small daily interactions.
- Audit the projects they’ve funded to identify ways they are already supporting public joy and embracing other asset-based funding approaches, and begin to build on those approaches.
- Move beyond funding large celebratory events such as festivals and formal programs and begin to recognize everyday public joy practices. This may mean investing in intergenerational and cross-cultural exchanges that transmit public joy practices, supporting individuals leveraging public joy to hack hateful online algorithms, and supporting civic leaders to develop capacity to entrench public joy into their initiatives to mitigate polarization and promote sustained participation.
Clearly conversations and approaches–from public space design to policy to political engagement—pertaining to civic life need to be framed in ways that are more healing, unifying and aspirational. Public joy as infrastructure offers an important pathway forward and philanthropists can help to break ground.
Jay Pitter is an award-winning public space expert working across North America, an adjunct urban planning professor, and the author of Black Public Joy (Penguin Random House, 2026). The book explores Black people’s public joy histories, sacred rituals, movements, and contemporary expressions—situated within universal public space themes such as belonging, healthy spatial entitlement, and stewarding one another’s joy. Ms. Pitter’s practice and research advance her broader public joy framework, positioning it as civic, cultural, and spatial infrastructure.