Why UnMaking Boxes?

Have you seen the Black Mirror episode Men Against Fire (Season 3, Episode 5)?

There’s an unforgettable scene where soldiers are tasked to exterminate “roaches,” these grotesque, otherworldly creatures. Except they’re not. The soldiers were programmed to see them that way. Strip away that programming, and the “roaches” are just humans. The military knew exactly what it was doing: remove the perception of someone’s humanity, and compassion disappears with it.

What if the opposite were true?

What if, by stripping away our perceptions and biases, we could see the human core of every individual, and build real respect and compassion for every human story?

That’s what UnMaking Boxes is here to do.

Play is the shortcut.

When we laugh, move, and get a little silly together, it becomes much harder to put each other in boxes. Games, shared jokes, and playful challenges remind us that beneath titles, roles, and assumptions, we are just people… trying, learning, and figuring it out together.

And we don’t just see each other more clearly. We build the kind of connection that’s hard to forget.

Unmake your box!

We can’t stop putting others in boxes until we learn to unmake our own. The stories we’ve absorbed about who we’re allowed to be can keep us small. Through play, kindness, and creativity, we can question those limits, step into new ways of showing up, and start creating from a truer place.

Original musical composition, Unmake Your Box, from Ndimofor Aretas.

The Plurality of Veronica

Photographer: Anastasiya Ivanova

The Head UnMaker’s mission

I’m Veronica, Founder & Head Box UnMaker at UnMaking Boxes. I started this movement because I kept seeing stories of people deeply hating each other without ever really knowing each other, and I wanted to build something that created more love, joy, and understanding instead.

All my life, people tried to put me in a box. “You are Haitian. You are Black. You are athletic. You are female.” Any action that didn’t fit those labels was met with confusion, not curiosity. For a while, I played along, just to be understood.

But I was always more than any one label. Into arts as much as sports. Theatre as much as mathematics. Music and dancing as much as reading and games. At some point, I gave myself permission to stay curious, and everything changed.

I’ve carried that into my work ever since. I started designing social games as a teenager and quickly saw how play brought people together, breaking down walls between people who would never normally connect. A few years later, I founded Game Night Society, served as its president, and hosted monthly events where we laughed until it hurt and, in those moments, felt completely free.

That’s the power UnMaking Boxes is built on. Play isn’t a warm-up. It’s essential.

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