Long before “immersive” became an industry term, marginalized communities were already mastering the art of experience.
Across cultures and contexts, people pushed to the edges of society have created their own spaces of belonging—through ritual, music, performance, environment, and collective joy.
Within this lineage, LGBTQ+ communities—particularly spaces like Fire Island Pines—have served as powerful living laboratories for immersive design: crafting worlds where people could safely gather, transform, and become.
In this talk, Vance Garrett traces how these traditions directly inform the foundations of modern immersive practice—from portals and transitions to audience participation, environmental storytelling, and the choreography of collective experience. Drawing from his early career within queer cultural spaces and his work on pioneering projects like Sleep No More, he reframes immersive design not as a recent innovation, but as an inheritance—one shaped by communities who had to build the spaces they were denied.
This session offers both a cultural acknowledgment and a practical framework: a set of principles drawn from marginalized space-making that can guide creators in building experiences rooted in belonging, emotional resonance, and shared transformation.