Updated: 5 days ago
issue 2
fall 2026
Notes from the field: Homage to the community organizers who keep the world turning
An immersive producer goes rogue and creates a grassroots network of VR viewing parties.
Immersive Story Club, photo by Ember Wheeler
Editor's Introduction
Danielle Giroux is a former XR distribution specialist for Atlas V, an award-winning immersive production studio based in France. She has started her own consultancy focusing on creating personal connections through VR viewing parties. In this Note from the Field, she takes us along the winding path that led her to develop the “Immersive Story Club.” The Club is pioneering and testing a type of meet up that connects people through award-winning VR experiences. Part film club, part crafting circle, this pilot program is funded by Agog and may just be the way VR classics finally find a meaningful home.
A few years ago, I visited my Aunt Maureen in a town in rural New England. Torrington, CT is where my father and his side of the family grew up. It’s about two hours from NYC but pretty disconnected from city life. We went on a walk through town and stumbled into a used bookstore¹. The front window contains an eclectic collection of paintings, puns, signs and quotes from literature etched into wood plaques. When you go inside, the store has a grand piano in the center, just behind an entry desk with the original cash register from the 1940s. John Noelke sits there, usually reading. John’s an artist from Texas who fell in love with a girl from CT and built a family here. Eventually, he bought this old shoe store and converted it into a used bookstore which became a community arts hub.
In the back of the store, he arranged tables into “Nobody’s Cafe” where every Wednesday night, around 5:45pm, you’ll encounter Ember putting out paper and pens, and opening her laptop with prompts. She’ll beckon you over with a warm “Hello!! Do you want to join poetry?” That first time I walked in and got the welcome, I was nervous. Poetry always felt unreachable, profound and complex, something that I revered but couldn’t ever touch.
But something about the circle drew me in, somehow eventually changing the way I understand this very new medium of extended reality (XR.) You see, when I walked into that bookstore, I was wading in the unknown. Partly, I was still recovering from three years as “Head of Distribution” for an ambitious and evolving immersive media studio in France². It had been a month since I had left that job and left France. And while I wondered if I would return to immersive, I wasn’t sure what that would look like. I wanted to be community-engaged, at the same time, there had been something so empowering about being involved in a cutting-edge, visionary field. When I joined that poetry circle I saw rejuvenative arts in action, story sharing in real time that was deeply inspiring.
A year after I walked into that bookstore, I found myself at the International Documentary Festival of Amsterdam, Doc Lab³, an event I had participated in before when I was with Atlas V. At that time, I saw a presentation from MIT Open Doc Lab⁴ about the state of distribution and I was struck by how little had changed from when I had stepped away from Atlas V / Astrea. While there were always immersive installations at IDFA, I thought of that poetry circle and wondered about the ways conversation and group reflection around a VR film might help this distribution problem. Most gestures towards solving XR distribution look at audience throughput, technical solutions to multi-user, and venue networks, but that wasn’t the aliveness and care in community that I believed could be an ingredient in sustaining regular programming. When I learned about Agog and their work with XR for impact, it felt like a beacon of light⁵.
Sarah Wolozin, MIT Open Doc Lab, XR Distribution Research, IDF, November 2024, Photo by D. Giroux
Later that winter I would start writing for an XR publication⁶, covering SXSW immersive for them. In my head, I wondered about a merging of worlds – could VR films be communal, even if the technology itself wasn’t perfectly designed for that? I thought back to when I was a summer camp counselor running team building activities with groups – could a VR film be a launch point for group discussion, a prompt in and of itself? Might there be easier solutions to sharing VR films that are more human-focused? I wanted to try a grassroots model for VR story sharing that was like a poetry circle – recurring, made to be a light lift, and more about the humanity of those in the circle than the technology itself. I call this format “Immersive Story Club.”⁷
Spruce Cafe, research for Immersive Story Club, Winter 2026, Photo by Ember Wheeler
And so I pitched Agog and was granted support to pilot the research. So far I’ve conducted 54 iterations of story club in a variety of spaces such as arts orgs, galleries, bookstores, and most recently an XR Industry event⁸. What happens in a Story Club Circle has evolved over time, making me lean into questions around ritual. It’s been so wholesome, humbling, and even chill inducing. But it’s also been clunky, strange, embarrassing, and even painful at times. In New England, although I was always talking to partners like the Digital Navigators⁹, the MIT Open Doc Lab, or Joint Family in Boston¹⁰, I started to ask if it would be more beneficial to the work if I operated from inside an institution. And so, the latest versions are taking place in San Francisco’s Gray Area¹¹ - an indie arts and technology hub with an incubator program¹² I was accepted into this spring. The focus has been to test formats, community building, to learn from existing community programs from others and to host series. I began to see the act of hosting and working directly with people as a muscle. A core methodology has been to listen to the folks that join a circle and adapt to their suggestions¹³. And I’ve found that there’s a curiosity for XR here that extends outside of the industry box that I had been wedged into for years – these people want to make and SHARE their own worlds, not for profit, but just to be seen by others. This has been the strongest signal to me of where to move next.
The setting at Gray Area is different from a bustling cafe or community bookstore. Gray Area has an aura of seriousness – we go upstairs in the incubator where there is a salon-like setting with a projector. I transform the co-working space into something more cozy with lamps, tea, and serve some light crackers or cookies for those that might need something tangible after the disorienting VR. While a VR film might only be 15 minutes, we find that each session is hard to end within two hours because we want to talk! In general I love creating conditions where we can get to know others' perspectives, making space for world views that aren’t often aired out in a communal way (thinking of our social media bubbles).
Show & Tell, Immersive Story Club, Summer 2026, Gray Area Incubator, Photo by Al
In asking “what is the lightest lift” for this type of program, I’m still experimenting with the idea that this will live on in community arts spaces around the world. These spaces most probably won’t have that art therapist, social historian, policy expert, and activist. And in a moment when so many people in the immersive media industry are asking what VR needs to survive…I feel that doubt come in. But then I remember Ember, with her prompts and circle of chairs in the back of that Torrington bookshop.
Maybe it’s about growing - or finding - the Embers around the world, helping create and maintain the conditions so that those like Ember can keep their glow alight, and continue to warm those that come to the circle. And I’m beginning to see how that could happen with our technologies, even if I also feel like we’re playing with fire. I ask how can this be different from Big Tech trends which sometimes run ahead of our humanity? But, I’ve decided I will just keep following these gems of aliveness – the rejuvenative nature of creating, discussing, reflecting, playing, noticing, and caring for one another – trying to tastefully add the VR headset to community spaces like Ember does with poetry circle, wedged between the grand piano and the stage.
Endnotes
[1] Howard's Bookstore. (n.d.). Saddle repair + cleaning. Retrieved October 1, 2026, from https://www.howardsbookstore.com/saddle-repair
[2] Atlas V. (n.d.). Atlas V. Retrieved October 2, 2026, from https://atlasv.io/
[3] IDFA. (n.d.). DocLab program. Retrieved October 2, 2026, from https://festival.idfa.nl/en/new-media/
[4] Scott-Stevenson, J. (2026, May). XR distribution pipelines: A report produced through MIT ODL x IDFA DocLab research and development network, 2024-2026. MIT Open Documentary Lab. https://opendoclab.mit.edu/presents/xr-distribution-pipelines-mit-open-documentary-lab-idfa-doclab-rd/
This report was authored by Dr Julia Scott-Stevenson, University of Technology Sydney for MIT Open Documentary Lab. Co-investigator is Sarah Wolozin, MIT Open Documentary Lab. Scarlett Kim, Center for Unclassifiable Technologies & Experiences (C.U.T.E.), contributed research and strategy. Professor Ceasar McDowell is the principal investigator for MIT Open Documentary Lab. Published in May 2026. This report also draws from the work of the Independent XR Distribution Coalition (IXRDC), co-founded by Kim, Scott-Stevenson and Wolozin. Special thanks to the Coalition advisors. Research supported by MIT Open Documentary Lab and IDFA DocLab, with thanks to Caspar Sonnen and Jenni Tuovinen.
[5] Agog. (n.d.). Agog. Retrieved October 1, 2026, from https://agog.org/
[6] XRMust. (n.d.). XRMust. Retrieved October 1, 2026, from https://xrmust.com/
[7] Immersive Story Club. (n.d.). Immersive Story Club. Retrieved October 1, 2026, from https://immersivestoryclub.com/
[8] Immersive Arts UK. (n.d.). The Big Thing. https://immersivearts.uk/events/the-big-thing/
[9] National Digital Inclusion Alliance. (n.d.). Digital navigator model. https://www.digitalinclusion.org/digitalnavigatormodel/
[10] Joint Family. (n.d.). Joint Family. Retrieved October 1, 2026, from https://www.jointfamily.us/
[11] Gray Area. (n.d.). Gray Area. Retrieved October 1, 2026, from https://grayarea.org/
[12] Gray Area. (n.d.). Cultural incubator. https://grayarea.org/create/cultural-incubator/
[13] Costanza-Chock, S. (2020). Design justice: Community-led practices to build the worlds we need. MIT Press. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/12255.001.0001
Danielle Giroux
Danielle Giroux is a research artist working at the intersections of immersive storytelling, technology, craft, and community programming. Her practice explores XR distribution through the lens of facilitation with a focus on care-based and community-led models of access. Her experience spans XR film distribution leadership in Paris and program direction in residential youth programming in New England. She is developing this work with support from Agog Immersive Media Institute, sponsored by Games for Change, part of the Gray Area arts and technology ecosystem in San Francisco. Danielle holds an MA in Arts and Visual Cultures from Université Paris Diderot.
With much thanks to the creators and producers that opted into this research, without you, none of this makes sense. The goal is to build bridges towards meaningful activation because your work is WORTH sharing. While this list is non-exhaustive, the following folks contributed both artistically and through sharing insights about their work that had helped deepen this practice over time. Thank you to Sparsh Ajuha (Project Dastaan) of Child of Empire, Gwenael François (Skillab) of Oto’s Planet, May Abdulla and Barry Gene (Anagram) and Katayoun Dibamehr (Floreál Film) of Goliah: Playing with Reality, Mélodie Mousett (PatchXR) of Empathy Creatures, Zhuzmo of All I Know About Teacher Li, Veronica Graham of Diatribes, Victoria Scott of Cloud Breathe, Amit Palgi of Cycle, and to Unframed Collection representing works by Atlas V of Notes on Blindness, Adriaan Lokmann of Flow, and Philippe Cohen Solal of Insider-Outsider.
Affiliation: Immersive Story Club