Your Stories of Community
Where is your third space? An open call for submissions.
Roseville is full of stories and full of the people living them. I want to hear yours.
Specifically, I want to hear your stories of community in Roseville. Where are you finding yours? Where are people gathering organically or intentionally? What’s happening in these communities?
Community doesn’t happen by accident and we all know that making friends in adulthood is not always easy. Between 2020-2024, Harvard Graduate School of Education’s Making Caring Common (MCC) project investigated the underlying causes of loneliness. In May of 2024, they conducted a national survey to find out what Americans had to say about it. Twenty-one percent of adults surveyed said they had serious feelings of loneliness. The loneliest group was people between 30-44 years of age. Twenty-nine percent of this age group said they were frequently or always lonely. The next loneliest group was 18-29 year-olds at 24% and then 45-64 year-olds at 20%. The lowest reported rate was in adults aged 65 and older—just 10% felt lonely.
In Roseville, 39% of the population is between the ages of 20 and 49. Eighteen percent are 50-64 years old. Twenty-two percent are 65 and older. In a metro area like the Twin Cities, relationships are not always local. Activities and events are spread out. Most people don’t work in the city where they live, especially in the suburbs. In Roseville, just 9% of working residents—or 1,476 people—both live and work in the city, according to a Housing Needs Assessment presented to city council on Jan. 13. And yet, proximity is a key factor in creating opportunities to build relationships and cultivate community.
The MCC researchers made some recommendations for how to solve the loneliness problem, including promoting a culture of care and service and urging public and private leaders to “build up social infrastructure in order to help people develop meaningful relationship with others.” According to the report, 75% of those surveyed said they wanted more activities and community events and more public spaces to make connections.
So I’m curious—where is community happening in Roseville? A few weeks ago I posed this question in Substack Notes:
“Hey Roseville, I’m curious about something. Where are your “third spaces” where you regularly go to in Roseville to relax, meet-up with friends, or have informal conversations with other people in the community?
A third space is somewhere other than home or work/school, a place you might randomly run into someone you know or it’s possible to meet new people. Where is community gathering in Roseville?”
A few folks responded, listing places such as local coffee shops, Roseville parks, Ramsey County Library, Reservoir Woods, specific restaurants, youth sports, B-Dale Club, and the Harriet Alexander Nature Center.
I’d like to give you—Roseville Reader subscribers—the opportunity to share your stories of community here. So I’m opening up a call for submissions of short stories about a specific place or activity in Roseville—just pick one—where you go to meet up with friends or to connect casually with other community members. What happens in this space? What has this space and the connections there meant to you? Maybe it’s a story about watching youth sports with other parents, playing board games, a craft group, or civic club. Maybe it’s a daily or weekly coffee, karaoke night, or running group. Maybe it’s walking your dog or getting a haircut. Community is happening all over the City of Roseville—tell us where it’s happening for you! Encourage a friend to respond to this too—sometimes people need a little nudge.
Think of it like a Letter to the Editor, but responding to a specific prompt. Keep it to less than 500 words and share from the heart about your “third space” where you’re connecting with other community members in Roseville. If you mention anyone else by name, be sure to get their permission before submitting. The stories I choose to publish will include your name as the writer and a short “bio” describing who you are. Stories can be submitted to therosevillereader@gmail.com. I will respond to every submission and let you know if I’ll be using it in a future newsletter.
If you don’t want to write a whole story, but want to contribute a short paragraph describing where you’re finding community and what it means to you, please go ahead and send that! I may include it in an article with other people’s shorter comments too. Feel free to send those to me via email or just comment on this post.
I can’t wait to read and share your stories.
—NK
Update: There is no longer a deadline for submitting stories. If you have a story to tell, please send it to therosevillereader [at] gmail [dot] com.