Detroit is set to welcome roughly 200 social entrepreneurs, educators, artists, funders, mental health practitioners and holistic practitioners this week for a three-day gathering focused on healing and social change. Hearth Summit Detroit 2026 runs from Thursday through Saturday, bringing poetry, dance, theater, sound, visual art and movement into conversation with questions about organizational wellness, food systems, philanthropy and life in a gentrifying city.
According to hearthsummitdetroit.com, the event is designed to bring together 200 social entrepreneurs, educators, artists, funders, mental health and holistic practitioners, and it aims to deepen reflection across individual, collective and ecological wellbeing while centering art as a shared language of healing and connection. The summit marks the third U.S. location to host a Hearth Summit, part of an international series that, as of 2025, had held 27 summits in 18 countries and welcomed 10,000 changemakers from more than 90 countries, per the same source. As The Michigan Chronicle reports, the gathering is hosted locally by Be Well Beautiful People in collaboration with The Wellbeing Project.
A Detroit-Rooted Take on a Global Series
Demarra West, founder of Be Well Beautiful People and curator of Hearth Summit Detroit, said Detroit has a particular story to tell about wellbeing because so much of what people have built here has come from lived experience, according to the Chronicle's reporting. West added that art, movement, sound, food, reflection and connection create different ways for people to engage, framing the summit's mix of workshops and conversations as intentional rather than ornamental.
The summit opens with a welcome reception at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, per the event's official site. From there, programming continues at Kintsugi Village, located at 2020 14th Street in Detroit's historic Corktown neighborhood, before concluding at The Love Building. The Chronicle notes the summit highlights local perspectives and community-based approaches to healing, care, creativity and connection throughout its run.
Sessions Tackle Gentrification, Food and Philanthropy
The published agenda includes a session titled Reimagining Organizational Wellbeing, alongside Harsh Climate, Tender Farmers: A Discussion About Growing Food in Detroit. The official summit site and a companion listing from Be Well Beautiful People place the food-systems discussion in the final program block for Saturday, October 10. Both listings also place The Future of Wellbeing Amidst a Gentrified Detroit and From Philanthropic Exclusion to Equitable Inclusion in that final program block.
Regardless of the exact sequencing, the themes reflect broader patterns across the Hearth Summit series. The Wellbeing Project describes the regional gatherings as locally hosted events that advance individual, collective and ecological wellbeing, using deep conversations, immersive arts experiences and hands-on workshops, according to wellbeing-project.org. A related page from ecological-belonging.org notes that regional summits typically explore themes including the arts, trauma and healing, ecological belonging, community and belonging, and systems change, and that they are hosted by members of The Wellbeing Project's global network.
Scholarships and a Wider Network of Support
Full scholarships are available for those who need them to attend, according to a listing on thelovebuilding.org. Per organizers, Hearth Summit Detroit also offers registration information and a full agenda through its website.
Be Well Beautiful People provides retreats, therapy, coaching, training, advocacy and other services focused on healing and liberation, the Chronicle's reporting notes, while The Wellbeing Project supports the wellbeing of people and organizations involved in social change through research, organizational support, convenings, storytelling and partnerships. The Detroit event follows a similar format used elsewhere in the series — the Hearth Summit Berlin, for instance, is described by betterplace-lab.org as a two-day gathering built around connectedness in a fragmented society, designed for roughly 150 multipliers from business, civil society, politics, academia, philanthropy and the arts.
