Past the flashing arcade game lights and the hum of pinball machines, a large back room tucked away at Realms Arcade transforms into a different kind of space every few weeks on a Sunday night.
Tables are stacked with magazines, stickers and enough glue to stock up a small craft store. For four hours, the arcade becomes a creative hideaway — an all-ages collage night where you don’t have to call yourself an artist to belong.
At the center of it all is Simon Schabot, who started the event after noticing a lack of public creative spaces in Boise that don’t require money, experience or an existing social circle to enter.
“I didn’t really feel that there were a lot of craft nights in my area,” they said. “I wanted to create a third space that actually felt accessible to people.”
The original idea grew out of small collage hangouts held at a friend’s house, but soon became much larger when Schabot asked Realms if they could try it on a larger scale.
As they prepared to take collage night from a small living room gathering to a bigger space at Realms, they realized they would need more materials to accommodate everyone.
“I thrifted all of the supplies at first and asked people to donate supplies when they participated,” they said. “And now it’s honestly overload — I have more magazines than any one person should have in their home.”
The abundance is intentional. They recently switched to a sliding scale instead of a fixed fee so that anyone could join in, no matter their budget.
“Sincerely, just pay what you are able,” Schabot wrote in the announcement for the event. “I don’t want a cover to be a barrier to entry.”
Despite hosting the events, Schabot rarely participates in the collage-making. Their main focus is watching the room come alive and helping participants explore their creativity.
“I love seeing what people create and watching them all talk to each other,” they said. “There’s been many times where I’ve seen groups of strangers leave as friends — it’s so crazy.”
Attendee Sophia Wheeler, working on a piece filled with playful stickers and googly eyes, said she felt that sense of connection herself.
“It’s such an awesome space to make art, hangout and just create new things with my friends,” she said.
At the same table, first-time attendee Ivy Poulin was finishing her collage and turning it in the light to look at it from different angles.
“This was my first collage night,” Poulin said. “I haven’t made art like this in years. My inner child would be so happy right now.”
Moments like that are what Schabot measures the night by. Around the room, strangers traded scissors, passed stacks of magazines back and forth and compared how differently their pieces had turned out despite pulling from the same source.
“You just get in the flow, and everything else disappears,” Schabot said. “You’re surrounded by a whole bunch of creative energy.”
That energy often carries beyond the night itself, leaving people motivated to keep creating, experimenting and exploring new ideas in their own time even after they leave.
“I’ve had people tell me they were so inspired by collage night that they went home and made other art,” they said. “That’s one of the most gratifying feelings in the world.”
By the end of the night, the tables were a colorful mess of finished collages and paper scraps. People lingered, admiring each other’s work and exchanging contact information with new friends, reluctant to leave the space they had created together.
“Seeing this all happen in real time is the sweetest experience ever,” Schabot said. “It’s exactly what I always wanted this to be.”
