In May 2022, Storefront for Community Design announced a bold, new vision and a three-year strategic plan. We will firmly focus on transforming our low-cost design and planning assistance programs and expanding our design education programs to inspire community-driven design in the built environment.
This is a living, breathing plan that we will continue revisiting over the months and years ahead. Since kickstarting our plan in July, we've been building an intentional roadmap that prioritizes actions and creates measurable goals. We are excited to share it and begin collaborating with you as we continue to realize our vision.
Each year, Valentine’s Day reminds us to purposefully demonstrate love, care, and support for our families, friends, and communities. This year’s holiday also marks Storefront for Community Design’s 10th anniversary and we want to shout a huge THANK YOU for your support in making our first ten years a success.
Since the beginning, we set out to make design accessible to all “for the love of our city.” Through partnerships and community collaborations, we continue to discover new ways of seeking Richmond's physical and social transformation through design and community voice. After an incredible ten years, we remain humble, yet excited for the possibilities that lie ahead for our organization, partners, and neighbors.
Our Board of Directors, staff, and partners are excited to celebrate this milestone anniversary throughout the year, so stay tuned for ways to get involved. To kickstart our celebration, here’s a few ways you can show your support today.
Donate to Storefront to support our next ten years
Volunteer as a Session Designer
Share our story with your network
Whether you’ve been with Storefront from the beginning or just a short time, we wanted to celebrate our anniversary with a look back over the last ten years. Enjoy the memories and accomplishments of our community and we look forward to making many more with you in the coming years. Now, it’s time to celebrate!
Storefront for Community Design is excited to announce the selection of Shawn Balon as its new Executive Director.
Shawn brings a wealth of experience in design, non-profit, and educational environments with expanded knowledge of organizational management and strategic planning. He has the strategic vision necessary to elevate Storefront for Community Design and its programs in the years to come and will bring a creative, innovative, and collaborative approach when working with staff, board members, donors, partners, volunteers, and the community-at-large.
“I appreciate the board’s confidence in me, and I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to lead such a great organization. It will take innovative and purposeful solutions to create a path for Storefront for Community Design to continue addressing the challenges in our communities, and I look forward to advancing my efforts to focus on the importance of participatory design to honor differences, challenge injustices, and create vibrant neighborhoods,” said Balon.
We recently got to share a few projects at mOb studio + Storefront for Community Design with Richmond Magazine and how it all got started. Read the full interview by Taylor Peterson published on Feb 7, 2020.
“Design provides a vision rather than a … volatile position.” —Camden Whitehead, co-founder, Mob Studio
mObjOb8 ended on Friday with an exhibition, a bridge, and a poster from each of the six teams. The Middle of Broad students (mObians) each suited up for the evening after a long night of model-making. Solutions across the interstate included a hill and vaulted ceiling, housing to replace the housing demolished by the infrastructure, and an amphitheater complete with a goldfish.
Get ready for mObjOb8 happening all next week !!!
Students are imagining and modeling bridge concepts that heal the geographic, socioeconomic, and racial injustice of Interstate-95 running through Jackson Ward.
More discussions, solutions, and models to come throughout next week. 6 teams of students will work on a unique spanning proposal, culminating in an awarding of the mOb cup and a grand opening on November 4th, November First Friday in the Arts District.
The VCU Department of Physical Therapy is working on developing an innovative rehabilitation device that could be used in the home, therapy clinics and even daycares, to encourage infants to work on their prone motor abilities. However, there is a need to re-design the center to be more family friendly and portable.
This project is so important because the development of gross motor skills is vital to an infants development. The Department of Physical Therapy's new design encourages infants to participate in tummy time longer than current market play centers.
If you are a designer that would like to engage in the re-design please contact us at hello@storefrontrichmond.org!
My name is Jacqulyn Washington but most people call me Jackie. As a graduate student of social work, I am focusing on community engagement, revitalization and resilience. Here at Storefront for Community Design, I am researching how to justly enter communities. This topic is so relevant to us all because we all enter communities in some way. In just one day, I pass through 3 neighborhoods. Think about which communities you drive through on your way home. Have you ever thought about what impact you have or don’t have in those communities? What about your own community? How does your job or school intersect with surrounding neighborhoods?
I am not only researching how to justly enter communities by reading peer-reviewed articles and textbooks but I am researching in a truly active way. I am learning though meeting, talking, partnering and participating in communities. Over the next 5 months, I will be sharing this journey with you through updates on Storefront’s blog. The thoughts posted here will be an expression of my academic, professional and personal knowledge relevant to community work. I invite you to use this blog series as an interactive way for us to have a community conversation on ways to justly enter communities. Each month a new question will be presented followed by weekly posts on related topics. These can be found below.
Please leave a comment below on what justly entering a community means to you!
An overview of things to be considered before entering and how to recognize the “nod of approval” from the community
Building rapport and taking care of relationships
Understanding why recognizing resiliency is just as important as identifying the problems when assessing a community
Examining why community engagement is the basis for an effective intervention
A summary of ways to evaluate community interventions and practice.
A year and a half ago in her Jackson Ward apartment, Jourdan James began dreaming about how to access more green garden space in her neighborhood. Now she is applying for non-profit status and furthering her plans for turning the triangular plot of land at 620 Chamberlayne Parkway into a community garden and educational space.
The plot is uniquely situated at a major gateway to the neighborhood, which sets it up to be a verdant usher into the neighborhood.
She is seeking assistance with a landscape plan of the 8,200 sq. ft. space, using approximately 4,000 sq. ft. for 12 raised bed gardens and the remaining space for storage, education, bee-keeping and leisure. The Jackson Ward Community Garden will be a space to learn about native flowers and vegetables as well as sustainable gardening practices. Some concerns she faces already include water access, fencing, and accessibility to all neighborhood residents. She also has plans for an updatable mural site for the dreary winter months.
For those who are interested, the scope of this work requires about 2 to 6 hours of your time. The deliverables are a site-plan and elevation rendering due by the end of October to help this forming non-profit raise funds and share their ideas for community green space and sustainability education.
We are excited for our fall semester's worth of design session projects. Read about them below!
A Sign of the Times
Use the frame of the "Stonestreet Diamond" sign on 209 East Broad Street to create a new sign for Walter and Urban Corps new development. "The sign doesn't have to/need to say anything, it should just be a sign of the times and fit in the existing frame." Walter Parks' vacant lot near the intersection of Foushee and Broad Streets is also available for improvement or action. There is a budget for improvements at both locations TBD based on proposals presented to Walter and his team.
Orleans Street
Transform Orleans Street into a 'great street' through a series of mOb-style interventions. The final terminal of the new Bus Rapid Transit System (completion scheduled for October 2017) will be located at Rockett's Landing. Orleans Street connects the community of the Greater Fulton Neighborhood to this high-speed transportation hub. The street requires urban / streetscape designs to transfigure the barren street into a more abiding space for pedestrians and neighbors.
VCU Honors College
The Honors College is looking to create a bolder profile by creating an unusual and inventive physical presence with their building. Work within their existing public spaces to create a striking and innovative connection between the street and the college. All elements of the building and public spaces are fair game.
FI Sky
Redesign an ignored outdoor courtyard space with FI Sky, a program that implements innovation for traditional classrooms. The site is on the southern side of Grace Harris Hall on West Main and Harrison. This project includes but is not limited to landscaping, plant selection, and educational spatial design.
Brooks Diner
Revamp the identity of an existing restaurant that is a beloved community gathering place. They will need interior design solutions but also are looking to expand and enliven their outdoor spaces through landscaping or an exterior dining area.
HI Richmond Hostel
HI Richmond Hostel is about a year old, and functions as both affordable overnight lodging and as a community center. HI Richmond is located in the old Otis Elevator Company building, which has also been used as a women’s prison from about 1980-1999.
Currently, the basement is unfinished, somewhat of an informal storage area, and not zoned for permanent use. However, the basement does get traffic: they have hosted wilderness medical training classes down there, community theater and comedy groups use it regularly as a rehearsal space, and they sometimes hold larger meetings down there.
They are looking for ways to activate and improve their basement in ways that both reference their building’s history, benefit the Richmond community, and speak to their larger organization’s mission (fostering a more tolerant world through travel).
Neighborhood Assistance Officers
Rebrand the identity—uniforms, logos, badges, perhaps even the name—of the Neighborhood Assistance Officers. These officers are non-sworn, civilian, unpaid volunteers who provide critical support in varying capacities to the Richmond Police Department.
Richmond Behavioral Health Authority
Design sewn products using the research Kerrie and Cassandra have done over the past six months with hand-rolled custom fabric. This project will also require organizing workshops and further research.
Giving to Extremes Medical Missions
Develop the visual identity for Giving to Extremes Medical Missions for their public media presence: professional and promotional materials across print and social media platforms. GTE is a group of physicians who conduct surgical missions in Central America, as well as train local doctors. They are a relatively new organization and don't have any visual collateral yet.
Clean City Commission
Develop a grassroots litter prevention campaign for Richmond. The campaign will focus on two areas, both North and South: Highland Park and along Reedy Creek. This project will focus on one of these areas and encourages innovative, active, and whimsical (read: non-slogan) solutions.
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