BLOCK

One of the app features, showing ability to choose which cultures you are interested in.
Looking at adding and personalising your profile in the app.

Inspiration

Culture rarely comes to us as one complete picture — it's a dish your family makes, a language you only half-speak, a festival you attend once a year, a community you've heard of but never found your way into. At the same time, information about cultural events and communities is scattered across Instagram, Facebook, event platforms, university societies and word of mouth. We wanted to build something that brings those scattered pieces together into one place.

What it does

BLOCK is a cultural discovery platform that helps people reconnect with their culture and the communities around them. Users can:

Discover cultural and social events nearby
Explore an interactive cultural map of places, restaurants and organisations
Find halal and cultural food based on cuisine and dietary needs
Save events for later and keep registered events in a personal calendar
Post in a moderated community space to ask questions or find people to attend events with ("Go Together")
Connect through verified accounts, with reporting/blocking for safety

How we built it

BLOCK's frontend is built with React and Vite, using lucide-react for iconography.

Challenges we ran into

The time constraints were difficult especially with trying to build all the relevant features we liked, we were able to provide a nice outline of what the project entails as a starter.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

The furnishing of the idea as well as our ability to try and complete a project like this within 24 hours.

What we learned

To work harder on different timelines so that we can complete everything in time.

What's next for BLOCK

Future plans include personal cultural journeys, language learning communities, cultural stories and oral histories, community organisation profiles, personalised recommendations, integration with external event registration platforms, and AI-powered cultural discovery.