Be… Commons is a six-week participatory public art village in downtown Las Vegas, running 11/23/2026, through 01/08/2027. U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy declared Chronic loneliness and social isolation a national public health epidemic. Social disconnection increases the risk of premature death by 30%. It is comparable in harm to smoking fifteen cigarettes a day and exceeding the risks associated with obesity. Las Vegas, ranked the second loneliest city in America, thousands of people will spend this December inside that thought. Some of them will not survive it.
Our motto is simple. Turn a stranger into a neighbor. Turn a neighbor into a friend.
The primary artwork is a thirty-foot living holiday tree decorated entirely by the community through free ornament making workshops led by local artists. The tree is lit on December 1 and ceremoniously planted in a City of Las Vegas park after the season, a living symbol of continued life after the season ends. The secondary installation is FIOH, an interactive sculpture by Las Vegas artist Stefano Kajatt that projects photographs of loved ones onto a glowing heart. Around them are ten participatory art camps, including a Human Library, a Confession Wall, a Trade Board, and an Open Mic, each designed to create real human connections between strangers.
The Holiday Tree Sanctuary is open twenty hours a day, every day, because we cannot predict when a person in crisis will come. We stay open so that when they come, the lights are on and the gate is open and someone is there.
Be Commons is produced by Downtown Beat Collective, a Nevada nonprofit founded by artists and musicians to build a sustainable creative economy and to combat chronic loneliness through low barrier interactive events. It takes a community to save its community. This is that community.
Learn More: https://dbcvegas.org/