Common Ground Civic Centre

Common Ground Civic Centre We help you work on “what’s not working” for yourself, your people and your organisations so that we can all do better together.

Cultivating active citizens & practitioners for social impact.

🏛️ Common Ground x MCCY project, Year 7 of 9

🎙️ Follow us on The Soul at Work () where we work on Culture Change, Organisational Development & Social Impact Consulting We do this by:
- designing a cultural change strategy that best fits your situation
- training you in strategic thinking + people skills needed to create that change
- facilitating complex team and organisation-wide conversations
- coaching your key people who will be managing and leading the change.

There’s already a lot of conversation about why third spaces matter. Others have made that case better than we could. So...
14/09/2026

There’s already a lot of conversation about why third spaces matter. Others have made that case better than we could. So instead, we want to think about what we can actually bring to it.

And what we that is is the chance for that case to be felt, experienced and embodied. For one day, at our third space, Common Ground Civic Centre, with our community of practitioners each advocating for their own versions of a third space.

Connecting Narratives for Change Festival 2026 is happening on 17 Oct, Sat. Save the date!

Full programme lineup out soon!

Circle 1 of CNFC Circles brought us to Joo Chiat Social Club, where we got to hear from Bennett and Mariel, co-founders ...
04/09/2026

Circle 1 of CNFC Circles brought us to Joo Chiat Social Club, where we got to hear from Bennett and Mariel, co-founders of this third space designed for intergenerational connection.

We sat with a simple but slippery question: are third spaces for Me, or for We?

As with everything in life, it’s not an either/or, but a polarity to manage. Take “Me” too far, and you get isolation. Take “We” too far, and you get burnout and resentment.

The skill — for anyone, not just impact practitioners — isn’t picking a side. It’s discernment: knowing when to course-correct toward self, and when toward collective.

“Our job is to deal with tensions.” — Bennett
“We fight a lot, but we fight well.” — Mariel

Next up: CNFC Circle 2 on Money & Mission, with City Sprouts and Ground-Up Initiative (GUI)

📅 18 Sep (Fri), 7pm-9:30pm
📍Common Ground Civic Centre
🎟️ $35 (incl. GST) — $22 Early Bird tickets end tonight!

Find out more: https://ourcommonground.com.sg/cnfc26-circles

Every third space starts because someone believes in something. But belief doesn’t pay the bills — money does. That’s th...
22/08/2026

Every third space starts because someone believes in something. But belief doesn’t pay the bills — money does. That’s the tension at the heart of CNFC Circle #2.

On 18 Sep, we’re joined by Simone Lim of City Sprouts and Cai Bingyu of Ground-Up Initiative (GUI) — two practitioners building very different homes for the same belief: that sustainable living starts with community.

Early bird tickets available until 4 Sep – $22 (incl. GST).

Find out more! https://ourcommonground.com.sg/cnfc26-circles

Impact work, collaboration, bringing people together — they look good in photos and numbers. But those don’t always show...
13/08/2026

Impact work, collaboration, bringing people together — they look good in photos and numbers. But those don’t always show what it took to get there.

After last year’s Connecting Narratives for Change Festival, we sat with our wins and named the costs behind them. Swipe to read through them!

These are costs we’re willing to pay because we believe a neutral third space matters — for conversations on how things can be better in our personal, professional and civic lives.

If that’s something you’re looking for too, CNFC is coming up very soon. Save the date: 17 October, Saturday!

We don’t often get to hear what starting and leading a third space actually feels like from the inside. Who takes care o...
30/07/2026

We don’t often get to hear what starting and leading a third space actually feels like from the inside. Who takes care of the space — and who takes care of the people running it?

That’s what we want to explore in Circles #1.

On 28 Aug, we’re opening CNFC Circles with our first session at Joo Chiat Social Club. We’ll get to hear from Bennett and Mariel on what it’s really taken to build and sustain the space, including how they’ve learnt to flow between “me-first” and “we-first” to keep it all going.

Early bird tickets available until 10 Aug – $22 (incl. GST). Find out more: https://ourcommonground.com.sg/cnfc26-circles

We don’t often get to hear what it actually takes to start and sustain a third space. That’s the very conversation we wa...
29/07/2026

We don’t often get to hear what it actually takes to start and sustain a third space. That’s the very conversation we want to start.

Introducing CNFC Circles — a new series under CNFC26 for impact practitioners who want to go deeper on what third spaces really need.

Four circles. Four polarities every third space has to navigate: the people, the money, the ecosystem, and the endings.

Circle #1 starts in August. Tickets on sale now! https://ourcommonground.com.sg/cnfc26-circles

We don’t often get to hear what it actually takes to start and sustain a third space. That’s the very conversation we wa...
29/07/2026

We don’t often get to hear what it actually takes to start and sustain a third space. That’s the very conversation we want to start.

Introducing CNFC Circles — a new series under CNFC26 for impact practitioners who want to go deeper on what third spaces really need.

Four sessions. Four practitioners. Four polarities every third space has to navigate: the people, the money, the ecosystem, and the endings.

Circle #1 starts in August. Tickets on sale now — https://ourcommonground.com.sg/cnfc26-circles

25/07/2026

Each year, we gather at Common Ground Civic Centre for Connecting Narratives for Change (CNFC) — our annual community festival where we pose a question and invite our collaborators and communities to weigh in.

This year, it felt only fitting to explore the topic of third spaces at the very third space we’ve come to build for many of you — social impact practitioners, community builders, and anyone who cares about making Singapore a little better.

And with more of these spaces opening up across Singapore — and just as many quietly closing — we want to ask: what do we actually need them for?

From Aug to Dec, we’ll host a series of engagements exploring that question, and what it takes to start and sustain these spaces.

More details coming soon. But for now, save the dates: 28 Aug and 17 Oct.

🔗 ourcommonground.com.sg/cnfc26

Good impact work needs a good impact story. So why does the sector treat it as an afterthought?We’re co-hosting this Imp...
23/07/2026

Good impact work needs a good impact story. So why does the sector treat it as an afterthought?

We’re co-hosting this Impact Evenings with Green Nudge because they’ve sat with this exact tension — not just talked about it. Every December, they publish an annual Impact Summary Report: a deliberate pause to ask “what actually happened here” before telling anyone about it. That kind of intentionality is uncommon not because people don’t want it. But because most don’t have the capacity or resources to make space for it.

31 July 2026, 7–9pm at Common Ground Civic Centre.

Link in bio to sign up for Impact Evenings!

Impact doesn’t always show up in numbers. Sometimes it shows up in the extra time and effort a team chooses to give.The ...
17/07/2026

Impact doesn’t always show up in numbers. Sometimes it shows up in the extra time and effort a team chooses to give.

The teachers at Brave Feats Student Care could’ve told their students what to do. Instead, they let the children lead.

Swipe through to see what came out of it.

—

We write social impact stories to document what impact work really looks like beyond what gets measured.

Read the full story: https://bit.ly/CGCC-impact (or head to link in bio!)

Address

21 Bedok North Street 1, #03/01
Singapore
469659

Opening Hours

Monday 09:00 - 18:00
Tuesday 09:00 - 18:00
Wednesday 09:00 - 18:00
Thursday 09:00 - 18:00
Friday 09:00 - 18:00

Telephone

+6563348773

Website

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