Rehearsing the Future
A conversation with Me Time on imagination, interconnectedness, and the dance floor as a dream space
The next World Building Lab intensive will take place in Toronto, Canada, on June 12–14. Apply to join.
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Negin: Can you introduce yourself and share a bit about who you are, what you do, and why you do it?
Me Time: I’m Me Time. I’m an experience designer, a world-builder, DJ, musician — lots of different things. But what grounds me is this sense that we need spaces to rehearse the future.
That’s really my mission and why I create what I create. The world is constantly changing, and especially right now it’s easy to feel really powerless. I want people to recognize that they actually have a lot of agency to create the world we live in.
A lot of the experiences I create are grounded through the dance floor because I actually believe the dance floor is a dream space. It’s a space where a lot of things that feel impossible in the outside world become possible there. Beyond the somatic benefits of moving our bodies, it’s also about connecting with ourselves and with each other.
That becomes my stage or container for building experiences around connection.
Negin: When was the first time you realized the dance floor had transformative potential?
Me Time: It goes back to my DJ name and artist name, MeeTime, because the dance floor was where I really discovered myself.
When I was 11, I was part of the opening production of The Lion King in Toronto. I didn’t have much connection to my own ancestry, but I remember hearing the drum and South African music for the first time and feeling deeply connected to it in a way that felt beyond memory — something innate.
Then later, in university, after a period in high school where I think a lot of people are trying to become who they think other people want them to be, I experienced my first rave. And it felt like I was journeying through my inner worlds and getting to ask: who am I really beyond all of this identity I’ve constructed?
That was incredibly transformative.
Since then, I’ve met my life partner and many of my best friends through dancing. Every time I go to the dance floor, something magical happens. Something lands, something is created, something is dreamt.
It’s this beautiful space that’s both futuristic and ancient — it connects us to what humans have always done: gathering in celebration, mourning, community, and movement.
And it’s interesting that in times of turmoil, dancing is often one of the first things to go. It’s outlawed, suppressed, forbidden. That tells us something about its power.
Negin: How was BrightSide born?
Me Time: A key part of my creative process is: create the space you can’t find.
Back in November, I was really dreading another dark, cold, isolating winter. I happened to go to Allan Gardens, and the experience of walking from this gray, cold environment into a warm, humid, living space full of plants and turtles and fish — it immediately shifted something in me.
I remember thinking, “Wow, this is a space I’d love to spend more time in.”
At the same time, I’d been trying to figure out what kind of creative project would reignite my spirit. In the past I’d done large-scale events and then kind of disappear for a while afterward. I was craving something more like a practice — something iterative that I could keep returning to and evolving.
I knew I wanted:
to bring people into Allan Gardens,
to create connection during a dark and isolating season,
to make it intergenerational,
to make it accessible to people who don’t necessarily participate in nightlife culture,
and to make it alcohol-free or at least not centered around substances.
I wanted a space where people didn’t need substances to lower their guard, but where the design of the experience itself would help people open.
And honestly, it’s been as much a gift to us as it has been to anyone else. It’s become a reminder that we’re not meant to get through difficult times alone, and that we actually have the ability to ignite hope and joy together.
Negin: Why is it important to create “worlds within worlds” or microcosms?
MeTime: I think there’s often this feeling that the world is being done to us — that we’re just receivers of systems and structures.
But actually, every action we take contributes to shaping the world. The small interactions matter:
how we treat strangers,
decisions we make around the environment,
how we relate to each other.
That’s all world-building.
I think what spaces like the World Building Lab do is help us zoom in on what world-building actually means in practice.
A lot of my work draws on fantasy and science fiction because science fiction lets us move beyond what currently feels possible. Throughout history there have always been people imagining realities that others thought were impossible.
There’s this quote by Walidah Imarisha that I come back to all the time:
“We have to begin to dream of new worlds so that we can begin to build them.”
Dreaming and imagination are the beginning of the practice.
Negin: What role do play and imagination have in your work?
MeTime: I think adulthood squashes imagination. As kids we naturally believe impossible things are possible. We’re astronauts, we’re in space, we’re talking to aliens — and it feels obvious.
So a lot of my work is about helping people return to that inner child state.
Play is one of the keys to unlocking that.
At BrightSide, one of the first things I say is: “Let’s imagine that the world outside this dome doesn’t exist. Let’s imagine it’s just us here.”
Through movement, interaction, silliness, and getting people slightly outside their comfort zones, the hope is that we unlock parts of ourselves that are longing to be playful again.
One unusual thing we do at BrightSide is end every experience with journaling. And people often write things they normally never would have written because something has opened up in them emotionally and imaginatively.
I think a key part of world-building is temporarily pretending the world isn’t fixed the way it currently is.
Negin: What was your experience of the AI debate during the World Building Lab?
Me Time: I was on Team No AI, for what it’s worth. Not because I don’t use AI — I do use it quite a lot. But what I felt was being asked of us in the Lab was to trust our own human intelligence and imagination.
My concern is that AI pulls from what already exists. But dreaming and imagining often require moving beyond what already exists.
There was a study recently where two groups worked on a task — one using AI and one not using AI. When they removed AI from the group using it, their performance dropped dramatically and all their ideas started sounding the same. That homogenization concerns me.
At the same time, we eventually decided to use AI in a limited way — more as a tool to compile and clean up our work because we were running out of time. But my larger concern is the long-term cognitive effect, especially when we’re talking about creative thinking and thinking outside the box.
Negin: Beyond the AI discussion, what did you take away from the Lab?
MeTime: What really became clear is that the challenge wasn’t the task itself — it was how we worked together.
We’re losing our ability to communicate across difference and navigate disagreement. Society increasingly teaches us to retreat into our own bubbles where everyone agrees with us.
Even though most of us in the Lab shared similar values, we still had major differences in approach and communication styles.
And I think that’s something we urgently need to address because the challenges we face — climate, politics, technology — affect all of us whether we agree or not.
So the question becomes: how do we make decisions together when we don’t fully agree?
Negin: What did the intensive reveal to you about power and leadership?
Me Time: Power naturally tends to flow toward the people who are the most confident or articulate, regardless of whether everyone agrees with them. There were also quieter people in the group with a lot of intelligence and insight who weren’t necessarily stepping forward.
One thing I noticed is that people are uncomfortable claiming power because we associate leadership with authoritarianism — bad bosses, politicians, hierarchical systems. We all liked the idea of distributed leadership or shared leadership, but actually figuring out how that works in practice was difficult.
When I stepped into leadership moments, my focus was on how to bring quieter voices into the conversation and make sure everyone was being heard.
Negin: Did the Lab shift your understanding of creativity or strategy?
Me Time: One thing I kept noticing was how much we default to language — spoken language, written language — as our primary tool. But so much gets lost when language becomes the only form of expression. The image we created as part of our artifact communicated something beyond what the written words did.
And I kept thinking about how power dynamics shift depending on someone’s access to language or comfort expressing themselves verbally. That’s also why I’m interested in experiences that engage all the senses. Sometimes logic and strategy can actually come into conflict with imagination.
Children are a good example — they express themselves through movement, drawing, building, play. Not just language. So I wonder what happens to our creative capacities as we move deeper into AI and digital systems.
Negin: What vision are you living into?
Me Time: A big part of my vision is recognizing our interconnectedness. We need each other — not just humans, but our more-than-human relatives too. Disconnection is one of the defining conditions of our world right now, and I spend a lot of time thinking about where that leads us.
We cannot solve these challenges alone. We cannot find joy, hope, or healing alone.
So my vision is about helping people recognize that there is no “us versus them.” There’s actually only us. Community doesn’t require total agreement. We can still care for each other, support each other, and build a future together even while holding different perspectives.
That’s the future I want to move toward.
Negin: Final reflections on the World Building Lab?
Me Time: I think these kinds of containers are deeply needed right now because it’s hard to step outside of our daily lives and zoom out.
The Lab created a space where people could dream, imagine, and actively work toward a different and hopefully better world together.
That felt really transformative.
Learn more about Me Time
Me Time Instagram | Me Time LinkedIn | Brightside Instagram
The next World Building Lab intensive will take place in Toronto, Canada, on June 12–14. Apply to join.