On December 11, Central Florida Public Media hosted its final Engage in the Community live event for 2025 with Engage: Growth, Development & Belonging, an immersive evening centered on connection, identity and what it means to feel at home in a rapidly growing area. Hosted at the Central Florida Public Meda studios, the event welcomed 59 community members for a night of storytelling, reflection and shared experience.
The evening opened with a live Finding Home spark performance, followed by a panel conversation featuring Owen Beitsch, David Bear and Cecilia Nguyen. Together, the panel explored how growth shapes belonging, from development and housing pressures to the role of local businesses and neighborhoods in fostering connection.
Beyond the panel, attendees engaged deeply with a series of interactive installations designed to turn listening into participation. During the Engage Promise, participants committed to actions that could bring their communities closer together. The Belonging Wall was filled with pins marking places across Central Florida where attendees felt a sense of connection, with strands of yarn linking those locations into a visual web of belonging spanning all nine counties in the region. Nearby, the Key Wall invited guests to reflect on what home means by writing a single word on a paper key tag and hanging it alongside their neighbors’.
As the final Engage in the Community event of 2025, Engage: Growth, Development and Belonging closed the year by reaffirming a core belief of the series – that community begins with listening and grows when people are given a space to share, reflect and images what comes next.
Engage in the Community will return April 16 to present Central Florida Seen & Heard, a multi-platform newsroom project centering education in Central Florida. Space on Tap launches Feb. 19, an interactive, live space-science show hosted by Brendan Byrne that blends smart science, real laughs and audience participation.