This tutorial by Amy Kan ’27, Vivero Fellow and student at Grinnell College, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
This tutorial was reviewed in spring 2026 by Tierney Steelberg, Digital Liberal Arts Specialist.
Table of Contents
What Is Common.Garden?
“Common.garden is a grass roots, artist run platform, open for anyone to create a space for the casual meeting. Make your own garden in seconds.
In your garden you can watch a video together while you catch up with friends, create an exhibition and have an opening celebration, a quiz, or just hang out for a while. Whenever another visitor (don’t forget to invite your friends) is near, a connection is made, and a conversation can be had! Everyone is welcome to have a garden they like.
Without the pressure of camera’s, seeing yourself while talking to others, environments can be created in which the coincidental meetup is nurtured. Create an event in which you get to feel like running into friends, not just staring into a grid of people talking from the privacy of their homes.
Created during the first wave of lockdowns in 2020, between Amsterdam and Berlin as a response to the slow response to create new and original on-line meeting spaces of cultural institutions.
Resisting the capitalisation of the ever so necessary social dynamics that had been taking place over the last decade and a half by large tech corporations, common.garden respects privacy, allows pseudonyms, and does not sell your data.
If you have any questions about the platform, or wish to use our advanced features (panel conversations, multi room presentations, custom set ups) please contact us.
Developed during Rapid Response for a Better Digital Future by Eyebeam, in collaboration with Upstream Gallery, Office Impart, and many more. Awarded with the DLAA prize by Arte Generali 2020.” (Source: Common.Garden).
What Can You Do with Common.Garden?
Common.garden has largely been used for digital art exhibitions, but it can be used for any array of wide array of multi-media, spatially-oriented projects. Some possibilities could be non-linear writing, theatre planning, or even just catching up with friends.
Example gardens:
- On the Edge of the Horizon – common.garden
- the wrong biennale – common.garden
- Calculating Control: Situating Cybernetics – common.garden
- This Unjust Mirror – common.garden
- SKD | Bellum et Artes Exhibition – common.garden
- speculative-sinofuturisms – common.garden
How Do You Use Common.Garden?
- Quick Garden
- Go to: Garden
- Pick “quick garden” on the left, this randomly generates a garden name, often a string of random words such as “enough-deer-i-week”
- Enter a username of your choosing and agree to the privacy statement to enter your brand new garden!
- Enable camera and microphone, if comfortable, and scroll around as a little egg icon
- Hit “invite” in the bottom right corner to share the link to your garden with the relevant parties
- Custom Garden
- For a richer common.garden experience choose “custom garden” on the right
- Set a garden name, and enter an email address to associate the garden with
- To log-in to your garden enter the garden name.common.garden previously set, and select “edit show” in the lower righthand corner. Select this immediately after opening the garden as it will disappear in a few seconds
- At this point run setup wizard, and choose a page name when prompted and set a background color OR select “start from scratch,” which leads you directly into the garden without setting a page name or background color
From either of these paths the “i” icon opens the editing dashboard
- The most notable feature of the editing dashboard is the ability to adjust how tall or wide the surface area of the garden space is. Your garden can be as big or as small as you want it to be! Find this feature under the “style” tab
- Select the “new” button on the bottom left corner of the editing page to add new elements, adjust their size, color, etc. as needed. Some of the features require special permissions, but standard features present a wide range as well, from puzzles to videos to text. These are pretty straightforward—just be sure to pay special attention to the types of files and information the site requires—for example YouTube ID.
- The “portal” feature is a little but more complicated. Its main function is in connecting multiple gardens—think hyperlink. To use the poral you need to have another garden created to access. Once this is set up and named, activate the poral by typing in the name of the garden (before common.garden) for example to make a portal to speculative-sinofuturisms.common.garden, type in just speculative-sinofuturisms.
- Once you select and add something, add it to the map in the top left by typing into the label section or alternatively select “hide on map” to remove from the map
- Any changes you make will save automatically in time, but you can also select to save button to save manually. Once changes are saved, select visit in the bottom left to see your changes and reassess
- Explore the experimental features or custom CSS! Invite your friends!
