# Hosting & Guesting > *Hosting* involves inviting, greeting, and supporting those who enter your circle; *Guesting* includes acknowledging, honoring, and listening in the circles where you are a guest. A 2021 study exploring "Black Perspectives on Creativity, Trustworthiness, Welcome and Well-Being" described a difference between two related words: welcome and belonging. > Participants clearly distinguished between the concepts of *welcome* and *belonging*, describing welcome as a function of the actions and attributes of a space or event and belonging as an internal feeling that can be present or absent independent of the space. (Dawkins et al 2021) *Hosting* is a bundle of [[attention-perception-action]] approaches that intentionally align behavior and environment to promote feelings of happiness and acceptance among visitors. A location "feels" welcoming to you when recognize and resonate with its structure, symbols, and style, and when hosts behave in ways that acknowledge and include you. > Read [Field Notes related to the Hosting & Guesting function](https://notes.artsmanaged.org/t/hosting-guesting). Since so much of this feeling is based on each individual's culture, context, and personal preferences, a location that feels welcoming to one person may feel foreign and exclusionary to another. Hosting, therefore, is defined by the experience of the visitor. A closely related term, often use in commercial service businesses, is "hospitality," which tends to emphasize service, support, and staff behavior more than properties of the physical space. *Guesting* is a less discussed but equally important [[attention-perception-action]] set that emphasizes the experiences of the *host* rather than the visitor. We are all guests in multiple ways – guests on Indigenous land, in the natural world, in this moment in time, in spaces that are held by people, communities, or cultures that are not our own. As Bethany Hughes defines it in the realm of Indigenous practice: > *Guesting* is an active and intentional practice of presence with the goal of honoring and supporting the Indigenous people and spaces that always already undergird, surround, and shape your life and work. (Hughes 2019) --- ## Sources - Dawkins, Melody Buyukozer, Ciara K. Knight, Tanya Treptow, and Camila Guerrero. “A Place to Be Heard, a Space to Feel Held: Black Perspectives on Creativity, Trustworthiness, Welcome and Well-Being – Findings From a Qualitative Study.” Slover Linett Audience Research, November 2021. [https://sloverlinett.com/insights/black-perspectives-on-creativity-trustworthiness-welcome-and-well-being-a-qualitative-study/](https://sloverlinett.com/insights/black-perspectives-on-creativity-trustworthiness-welcome-and-well-being-a-qualitative-study/). - Hughes, Bethany. “Guesting on Indigenous Land: Plimoth Plantation, Land Acknowledgment, and Decolonial Praxis.” *Theatre Topics* 29, no. 1 (2019): E-23. [https://doi.org/10.1353/tt.2019.0013](https://doi.org/10.1353/tt.2019.0013). ## Tags (click to view related pages) #functions #functions/welcoming_guesting #seedling