Before anything else: “Creative Belonging” is the phrase Soul House uses to describe what it’s trying to build, and this post exists to explain it properly, in one place, so that anyone encountering the phrase for the first time has somewhere clear to go. What follows is a first attempt at putting language around it – the real version of this post should come from Elspeth’s own words, refined until it actually sounds like her and means what she intends it to mean.
Two words doing a lot of work
“Belonging” is the easier half to explain. It’s the feeling of arriving somewhere and, within a day or two, no longer feeling like a guest performing politeness – just a person among other people, at ease. Retreats are unusually good at creating this quickly, because a group moving through shared practice and shared meals bonds faster than almost any other social setting.
“Creative” is the less obvious half, and the more important one. It’s not primarily about art-making, though that can be part of it. It’s about belonging that comes from making something together, rather than simply consuming an experience together. A group that cooks a meal together, builds a closing ritual together, or co-creates the shape of a session feels differently connected than a group that has simply attended the same schedule.
Why this distinction matters
A lot of hospitality is built around consumption: guests arrive, things are done for them and to them, and they leave. That model can produce a lovely holiday. It rarely produces the kind of bond that has people messaging each other a year later, or returning as a group. Creative Belonging is our attempt to name the difference – a retreat isn’t just a set of experiences delivered to guests, it’s something a group builds together, even in small ways, over the course of a stay.
What this looks like in practice
It shows up in the long table, where meals are shared rather than served individually. It shows up in the way our team invites guests into the rhythm of the villa rather than managing them from a distance. It shows up in leaving space in the schedule for something unplanned and collective to happen – a spontaneous evening around the fire, a group activity nobody put on the itinerary. None of these are dramatic gestures. They’re small, consistent choices that add up to a group feeling like they made something together, not just that something was made for them.
Why it’s not just a tagline
It would be easy for a phrase like this to live only on a website header and mean nothing in practice. The test we try to hold ourselves to is whether every decision – from how we design the shala to how our team greets a new group – genuinely serves this idea, or whether it’s just decoration. Where it doesn’t hold up, that’s a sign something about how we’re hosting needs to change, not that the words need softening.
An invitation, not just a description
Creative Belonging isn’t only something we try to build into the villa – it’s something we hope facilitators bring into their own programming when they host here. A retreat built around co-creation, shared ritual, and genuine unstructured connection tends to be the kind guests remember years later, and talk about long after they’ve gone home.
