You Belong Here, 3619 El Cajon Boulevard, San Diego, CA (2026)

12/08/2025

Today, we’re highlighting Creative Services. Photography sessions, graphic design, brand consulting, web development, event planning, content creation; skills that help you build, grow, and tell your story.

Gifts don’t always have to be tangible. Sometimes the best gift is supporting someone’s dream, their small business, their next chapter. A brand refresh for a friend launching their practice. A family photo session they’ve been putting off. DJ services for community-centered gatherings that bring people together. A coworking membership to support someone’s creativity and nurture connection.

We all need support in different ways. Creative services meet us where we actually are.

These aren’t corporate agencies extracting profit. These are your neighbors offering their expertise, their vision, their labor to strengthen what you’re creating.

Every service you hire locally keeps wealth circulating in community. Every project becomes a relationship, not just a transaction.

The Solidarity Artist Gift Guide is our response to push back against corporate holiday spending. A free resource connecting you with local artists, makers, and community members so your dollars circulate here, not up to corporations.

Check out the artisans! Shop small. Shop local.

New to the guide?
Tap the link in bio to explore all sections:
💰 Purchase from local makers
📆 Find local community-centered holiday events
🤝 Trade & Gift skills and resources
🎁 Gift or receive mutual aid support

Want to be featured? Submit your offerings via form link in bio or scan the QR code in this post.

This holiday season, let’s invest in art!

12/06/2025

Today, we’re highlighting our local Artists. Original paintings, prints, collage, mixed media, custom commissions; this is work that holds meaning long after the holiday is over.

Art isn’t stuff to fill space. It’s story, beauty, and connection made by your neighbors.

Every purchase supports an artist building their practice, feeding their family, paying their rent.

When you give art, you’re giving something irreplaceable. You’re investing in the people who make our community vibrant and alive.

Check out the artists! Shop small. Shop local.

The Solidarity Artist Gift Guide is our response to push back against corporate holiday spending. A free resource connecting you with local artists, makers, and community members so your dollars circulate here, not up to corporations.

Check out the artisans! Shop small. Shop local.

New to the guide?
Tap the link in bio to explore all sections:
💰 Purchase from local makers
📆 Find local community-centered holiday events
🤝 Trade & Gift skills and resources
🎁 Gift or receive mutual aid support

Want to be featured? Submit your offerings via form link in bio or scan the QR code in this post.

This holiday season, let’s invest in art!

12/05/2025

The Solidarity Artist Gift Guide is our response to push back against corporate holiday spending. A free resource connecting you with local artists, makers, and community members so your dollars circulate here, not up to corporations.

Today, we’re highlighting Goods & Decor. This guide features San Diego artists offering everything from stationery and ceramics to upcycled goods, skincare, and home decor. Every purchase supports someone in your community building their practice, feeding their family, paying their rent.

Check out the artisans! Shop small. Shop local.

New to the guide?
Tap the link in bio to explore all sections:
💰 Purchase from local makers
📆 Find local community-centered holiday events
🤝 Trade & Gift skills and resources
🎁 Gift or receive mutual aid support

Want to be featured? Submit your offerings via form link in bio or scan the QR code in this post.

This holiday season, let’s invest in each other.

12/02/2025

You Belong Here supports grassroots organizations strengthening our community through mutual aid and solidarity. Organizations that uplift arts, culture, and the humanities as acts of resistance and joy.

Organizations protecting our most vulnerable neighbors and raising awareness about occupation and displacement. Organizations fighting for land back, for migrant passage and safety, for youth empowerment and BIPOC leadership. All of them working within ecosystems of liberation, all of them rooted in beauty and the belief that another world is possible.

Though You Belong Here is a digital creative arts hub, we know our struggles are intertwined. True community care means recognizing that artists can’t thrive when our neighbors are under threat, when Indigenous land is stolen, when migrants are criminalized, when genocide is funded, when youth lack resources, when BIPOC leaders aren’t supported to lead.

Liberation isn’t single-issue. It requires all of us, across every struggle, building together.

Here are some orgs and mutual aid groups that are doing the work and that I proudly support:

sd

I encourage you to give what you can to these organizations doing essential work. And if you can’t give financially, share their work, amplify their message, show up to their events, volunteer, amplify their calls to action.

We’re all part of the ecosystem. Let’s take care of it together.

In solidarity ✊🏾, Nic

11/20/2025

‘Tis the Season of Solidarity! ✊🏽

Communities nationwide are calling for a black Friday blackout and holiday spending boycott of large corporations. We’re answering that call.

In partnership with , local artists, leaders, and healers, You Belong Here is launching The Artist Solidarity Guide, a living resource for supporting our creative arts community through local purchases, trade and gifting, resource sharing, and mutual aid.

What if this holiday season, every gift you gave built the world you want to live in?🎁

This guide keeps wealth circulating in our community, strengthens interdependence, and ensures we’re taking care of each other and not feeding corporations.

Four Ways to Participate:
1️⃣ Add Your Offerings - We invite creative artists and healing practitioners to submit their offerings for showcase in our guide
2️⃣ Trade & Gift - Exchange or Gift skills, services, time, or goods with community members
3️⃣Request Mutual Aid Support - Ask for support
4️⃣ Submit Your Community Event - We invite you to submit your pop-up event, market, tianguis, or other community-centered events

Scan the QR code or visit the link in bio to fill out our form! The Guide goes live on November 25th. You can submit until December 15th.

11/10/2025

Hola friends!
It’s been a while. I’ve been wrestling with this platform (eeww the oligarch); how to balance showing up with joy when the world is dark and heavy. But here’s what I keep coming back to: Joy is the work.

If you’re new here, thanks for being here. I am the Nic that is Roc.

I built San Diego’s first physical incubator space for creative artists, You Belong Here (2018-2024). A space that nurtured growth, from coworking to fully equipped studios, community & cultural events to business education designed for artists. (Psst…this container and space still exists; follow my friends )

My passion: Economic empowerment for artists.

I’ve gotten pushback. Because embracing “wealth” and “business” feels capitalist. And yeah... traditionally, it is.

But my frameworks aren’t about thriving within the system. They’re about thriving outside of it.

I explore decolonized frameworks and purpose-driven practices. We color outside the lines and dip into alternative economies as solidarity.

Here, you take what you need and build your own path.

Challenge the system while creating soft places to land.

Speak abundance into spaces shaped by scarcity.

Name what needs naming. Leave room for complexity.

These frameworks aren’t just about running a business. They’re about changing the world.

Building what our ancestors laid the infrastructure for us to do and thrive against all odds.

This past year, I designed and implemented 3 capacity-building incubators for artists. I worked intimately with 54 artists, guiding them through values-centered business foundations that lead to community impact.

In the coming weeks, I’ll share more about these journeys. The souls I met. The people and partners who rooted me in self. The experiences that forever changed me. Through conversations. Through experiences. Through 1.5 years of travels and deep unlearning.

😱This isn’t the same business. 💁🏽‍♀️I’m not the same person.

And I’m here to build bridges back to one another for a better tomorrow.

P.S. Enjoy a random glimpse into my past few months.

05/14/2025

Across the country, we’re witnessing the erosion of arts programs and DEI initiatives at the federal level. The result? Nonprofits are scaling back, arts and public programs are being cut, and entire communities are losing vital cultural resources. As someone rooted in this work, I’ve been asking: How do artists continue to create, lead, and serve when traditional support systems are crumbling?

For me, the answer lies in self-sustainability rooted in artistic integrity. Now more than ever, we must build our own paths—resilient, interconnected, and creatively driven.

That’s the vision behind the CREATE Series, which I’ve developed in partnership with RISE Arts, . This series is a direct response to how traditional models fail to speak the language of artists. Too often, creatives are told to adopt business practices that feel alien, rigid, and disconnected from their work.

CREATE flips that model. We’ve designed this program with and for artists—infusing the process with creativity, collaboration, and experiential learning that feels organic to artistic practice. In hands-on workshops and facilitated sessions, artists will:

* Transform creative thinking into entrepreneurial advantage
* Build sustainable structures that protect and elevate their artistic voice
* Develop financial literacy in ways that unlock—not limit—creative freedom
* * Cultivate community-driven approaches to resilience

Through role-playing, real-world scenarios, and collective problem-solving, the CREATE Series reimagines organizational development as a living, breathing, creative process.

This is not a replacement for robust arts funding—we still fight for that. ✊🏽  But it is a strategy for building strength, adaptability, and possibility when external systems fall short.

The CREATE Series launches May 19th in San Diego, with brilliant facilitators including and Claudia Rodriguez-Biezunski & Manny Biezunski of

05/13/2025

Hiiii!! - wow, it’s been a minute (like a year)!

Long story short. I took some much-needed time away. Traveled, met amazing souls, I jumped off of and out of things, climbed to peaks I had no idea I could climb, got lost while traveling solo abroad (& loved every minute being lost), soaked up different ways of being in this world. Just what my spirit needed.

In the middle of all that wandering, my passion for supporting the financial resilience of creative artists returned to my heart. Because of the times we’re facing, this feels like the right moment to pick up where we left off. But in this moment, I don’t want to get into so many details about where You Belong Here is headed. I just want to share a peek into my life over the past year, real quick.
-Nic Roc💜

1: Most recent.
2: Over 500 steps UP to see this view - Porto, Portugal
3: Screenshot of my first digital incubator schedule for : Business Models for Creatives, Cohort
4: Me filming my first ever mini-documentary of my pal .modula (more to come) photo by
5: A Voice memo from a friend that I just listened to for the first time in a year (thanks Ianne )+ video of Kimsooja’s installation in the Coachella Valley for Desert X
6: Me jumping out of a plane.
7: Me climbing up a hella high mountain and enjoying the view. Sedona, Arizona.
8: Possibilities. Accidentally finding an entire Historic District dedicated to Creative Artists. Everything you could imagine, they did it/doing it. Tauranga, New Zealand.
9: Learning to receive. A beautiful handmade bday gift from
10: My First ever Ma’louba. Thank you 🇵🇸
11: I took up paddle boarding. My SUP Squad.
12: ⛺️ w/ Ale & Manuel in Sequoia.
13: Losing my Godfather and trying to navigate grief in a system that never lets us rest.
14: I’ll remember her like this. Reflecting on moments with my mom, after her Alzheimer’s Diagnosis.
15: She’s always by my side. Thanks
16: Made BOLD moves in entrepreneurship with
18: Ready to launch the CREATE Series with , , and and For more deets click link in bio!

04/27/2024

As we step into a new month, we are happy to highlight the amazing community-led events happening in May. We are always inspired to see how you utilize our space to launch your programs, workshops, art shows, and so much more. It is truly a privilege to be a space to hold your brilliant and community-based ideas. Thank you!

Swipe Right to see some of the programs happening in the coming month. Please share in support of these fellow creatives, organizers, and entrepreneurs, as their gifts should be spread far and wide.

Saturday, April 27th, 5pm - 7pm, stop by to support the youth art showcase hosted by Pedacito del Cielo. They are a beautiful organization that serves the at-risk youth and adolescents of Tijuana and Ensenada, helping them to build strong emotional intelligence.

Sunday, May 5th, 9:30am - 11:30am, Ianne Celest of invites you to The Listening Space. In her second workshop of the series, she invites you to See yourself through sound. Free yourself through frequency. “Within the Waters of Rest - A Sacral Womb Ceremony”

Tuesday, May 7th, 6pm - 8pm, join .gathering for their Art Game Nights. Get ready to dive into the world of surrealism with the legendary game, “Exquisite Corpse”. No art skills required. This is an opportunity to connect and be creative.

Saturday, May 11th, 1pm - 4pm, invites you to her Creative Offerings “Honoring Mamas and Families” portrait and headshot sessions. These sessions are focused on making creative resources accessible to the community. Each session is 20 minutes and is a great opportunity to gift a session with with your mama and family just in time for Mother’s Day.

Saturday, May 18th, 12pm-2pm, Join Journaling Workshop. If you’ve ever been interested in how to begin the practice of journaling, this is a great place to start.

🔗All events, tap the link in bio to register or visit the IG pages to access event registration links.

Do you have an event you want to host in our space? DM us and we’ll help you get started. Don’t put your brilliant idea and dreams on the sideline.

Cheers!
Nic Roc

01/12/2024

“...all humans are more similar than they are different. We are all made from the same matter that the rest of the world is. We all belong to the universe equally.”
-Featured Artist, Al Dawson

When I think of belonging to self, I also think of evolution of self. I think of how we are the center; the first drop, and then life is the rippling effect that is the dispersion of identity.

We forget we emerge first as singular essences - stardust. Then every experience shapes our multiplicity; we fracture trying on personas life offers. Yet returning home to our singular seed holds space for disjointed identities to reconcile as one integrated Self.

In nature’s rhythms, the core always calls back its ever-changing parts during its seasons. As this exhibit explores humanity’s search for belonging, may it remind us that the central force holding our dispersed pieces resides in our original nature as spiritual beings constantly evolving, shifting, planting, and growing. By shedding that which divides, we stand whole. And through standing whole, we cease divisiveness challenging our universal belonging.

We invite you to center and ground self with these bold works.

Join us this Friday, January 12th at 6:30 PM
For the closing reception of (What is) Belonging.

RSVP link in Bio to join these conversations on the closing night.

Artworks featured by
Slides 1-4: T. Jay Santa Ana
Slides 5-6: Al Dawson .dawson
Slides 7-8: Azul AKA Mariposx Healing
Slides 8-9: Celina Azucena .azucena

01/11/2024

Belonging begins within.

The featured artists within the (What is) Belonging group art showcase spotlight and tell the story of their journey to belonging, and for many that means navigating belonging as hyphenated identities.

Colombian-American, Japanese-American, Indian- America, Mexican-American, Filipino-American - they unpack pressures to fracture into halves when systems demand choosing which side fits and which pieces of self need to shift to be loved and accepted. Their stunning cross-section visuals and artistic approach breathe life into weaving multiple complexities into whole tapestries.

We invite you to immerse in these bold works and their uplifting fluidity. We invite you to ponder: What happens when we belong first to ourselves instead of seeking external validation?

Join us this this Friday, January 12th at 6:30 PM

RSVP link in Bio to join these conversations on the closing night! Free! Bites and beverages will be served.

Featured Artworks by
Slide 1: Scarlett Baily
Slide 3: Miko Aguilar AKA Qolaj
Slide 5: Chitra Gopalakrishnan
Slide 7: Kai Talstra
Slide 9: Adriana Ospina-Lopez

Free Fal estin3 🇵🇸 Free Co ngo 🇨🇩 Free Su dan 🇸🇩Cease Fi Re Now! Liberation for all!

You Belong Here

12/08/2025

12/06/2025

12/05/2025

12/02/2025

11/20/2025

11/10/2025

05/14/2025

05/13/2025

04/27/2024

01/12/2024

01/11/2024

Address

Telephone

Website

Alerts

Contact The Business

Shortcuts

Share

Category