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
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
Here is a recap of some recent projects that we have been working on this spring:
Holly Street Park + Oregon Hill Park system
We have been working with a designer to imagine some alternative solutions for the Oregon Hill Parks, specifically Holly Street Park. However, we wanted to hear from the community first. We will be releasing a report from our presentation at the Oregon Hill Neighborhood Association (OHNA) last Tuesday evening.
A spread from the initially proposed concept plan.
RVA Steaks N More
A concept for a proposed breakfast spot in Highland Park called RVA Steaks N More
RVA Steaks N More requested design assistance in setting up their take out steak shop in Highland Park on Meadowbridge Road. Their motivation is to provide delicious cooked to order meals at economical prices and one hundred percent customer service.
A new exhibition debuting on Valentine’s Day will conceptually reimagine Richmond’s historic Monument Avenue. Opening at the Valentine on February 14, this exhibition follows the Valentine’s Monumental: Richmond’s Monuments (1607-2018), which examined the role and context of more than 40 monuments in and around the city.
Titled Monument Avenue: General Demotion/General Devotion, this new exhibition is the result of a multi-year collaboration with the Storefront for Community Design and the mOb studiO at Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts.
“In keeping with our mission, the Valentine listened to the debate taking place in the wider Richmond community concerning monuments and what they mean to us today, and we responded with Monumental,” said Valentine Director Bill Martin. “We are excited to take this concept of important and timely community conversations a step further by hosting an exhibition that asks us to question the future of Monument Avenue.”
Last year, the Valentine, Storefront and VCUarts mOb studiO applied for and received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to host an international design competition, which invited teams of planners, architects, designers, artists and individuals to conceptually re-imagine Monument Avenue.
“We received 70 proposals from architectural firms, centers of higher education, artists and many others,” said Camden Whitehead, mOb studiO co-founder and an associate professor of interior design at VCUarts. “We hope that the diverse ideas on display in this exhibition at the Valentine will demonstrate the unique power of design to serve as a catalyst for community discussion and contribute to the important dialogue about race, memory, the urban landscape and public art.”
Submitted concepts will be featured in the exhibition at the Valentine. A jury will also review the submissions and select finalists. The winning concepts, including a People’s Choice Award, will be announced on November 21 at a closing reception hosted at the Valentine.
As part of related programming, exhibition organizers are in the process of planning two community conversation events.
Additionally, from February 16 to April 20, the Branch Museum of Architecture and Design will host the results of a similar design competition specifically for Richmond students in an exhibition titled Monumental Youth.
“The Branch Museum is excited to have the Monumental Youth exhibition in our galleries, as it gives a voice to young people tackling large design ideas in thoughtful and exciting ways,” said Branch Museum Executive Director Penny Fletcher. “In addition, it addresses a pressing design challenge confronting our community and many others – how can we make public spaces, designed a century or more ago, relevant and accessible today? We are proud to be showcasing this important and contemplative work from students in and around Richmond. The Branch Museum is dedicated to bringing exciting and challenging design thinking to our community, and the students represented in this exhibition have done that beautifully.”
Monument Avenue: General Demotion/General Devotion closes at the Valentine on December 1, 2019.
Finalists will be notified on the opening day of the exhibition at the Valentine.
You can read more about the exhibition and competition on our feature on NextCity.
This semester, Storefront is running a series of monthly workshops for youth at the Six Points Innovation Center (6PIC). Youth will learn design skills tailored to the needs of the space and themselves. Last night we learned how to stitch together notebooks and wrote messages to our future selves. The schedule for upcoming months includes:
February: Furniture Design
March: T-shirt Making Workshop
April: Typography Workshop
May: Logo Workshop
This past year Storefront’s helped further the design initiatives of 34 projects through the Design Session program, which offers low-cost design assistance to Richmond. These projects were situated in all 9 city districts. The majority of these Design Sessions supported non-profit organizations or initiatives that are youth and community-oriented. This year we had more graphic design requests than ever!
Storefront would like to take a moment to thank all our volunteer designers this past year. We couldn’t offer this service without the generosity and expertise of these local (and some out of town!) professionals. Storefront volunteers are actively working to improve our city through design. If that isn’t heroic, we aren’t sure what is. Thanks y’all!
We will release a downloadable report from this past year shortly.
The fall season is one of the most robust times for our Design Session program. We are currently seeking volunteers for 4 projects in the fields of architecture, landscape architecture, and interior design.
Here is a taste of each of the current projects:
A park project, which transforms unused public land in Richmond city into a park that encourages unity in the community, needs a landscape architect as a consultant.
A social enterprise hub and food court concept need interior and architectural conceptual help with the renovations of their warehouse space.
A historic school building seeks help (and muscle) with transforming its ruin into a community park and stage.
A neighborhood community arts center is looking for innovative and low-cost ideas for transforming their existing space into an art gallery for neighborhood artists, youth, and residents.
If you are interested in any of these projects, please email adele@storefrontrichmond.org for more information!
Updated July 3, 2018:
Storefront is proud to be recognized for the Monument Avenue: General Demotion/General Devotion Design Competition in the Monument Avenue Commission's Report to Mayor Stoney about the re-contextualization of the statues on Monument Avenue. You can find a copy of the report here.
And, check out the story about Richmond, the Confederate Monuments on Monument Avenue, and the Commission's reccommendation on NPR's Weekend Edition from July 8th.
Recent national events provide an opportunity to re-examine the role of Confederate statuary in the public realm. Monument Avenue: General Demotion/General Devotion is an international design ideas competition, aiming to contribute to this important dialogue by inviting architects, planners, designers, artists, and individuals to reimagine the entire 5.4 mile length of Monument Avenue in Richmond, Virginia, one of America’s grandest boulevards. Local Richmond organizations including The Storefront for Community Design + the mObstudiO at VCUarts will administer the international competition, a concurrent local high school competition, and community workshops and conversations. Monument Avenue provides a unique opportunity to enrich the conversation about race, memory, the urban landscape and public art. Competition registration is now open and remains open until September 15, 2018 with submissions due on December 1, 2018. The Valentine (https://thevalentine.org/), a history museum in Richmond, will host an exhibition of entries opening on February 14, 2019.
For more information, contact or visit:
monument@storefrontrichmond.org
www.monumentavenuegdgd.com
You can register for the competition at www.monumentavenuegdgd.com/national/submit
Please share this announcement widely with students, colleagues, firms, studios, community organizations, and anyone else who might be interested.
The Six Points Innovation Center's Spring programming has begun. Programming this semester includes Empowerment Hour, Green Team with GroundworkRVA, Lyrics and Beats, ArtStories, Multimedia Street Art, Blackademic in Residence, Design classes, Jobs for Life classes, and Higher Education Preparation and Assistance classes. There will also be various workshops and topics classes for teens in Highland Park who want to engage in arts, environment, advocacy, education & history. Six Points is also proud to launch the program, City Builders, which empowers youth to activism and understanding racism in city policy.
Learn more about 6PIC here and check out the spring calendar here.
The Stonestreet Diamond Sign at 209 East Broad Street is getting a updated with the help of the mOb Studio. Students in the studio worked individually to discover new material and surface treatments for acrylic. On Friday, they worked together in teams to layer the new faces of the sign with stenciled shapes and the building address. They carefully choreographed their movements around each other and the wet paint in order to shield overspray and avoid scuffing recently painted motifs.
On Saturday April 29th, Highland Park residents joined us for the Highland Park Spring Break Event. The event featured 8 different non-profit organizations working within the community. The goal was to engage with community members about how they might envision the growth of their neighborhood, to describe the resources these organizations offered, and most importantly to eat, dance, and perform in the talent show.
At least 100 people showed up to dance, hear about the Storefront for Community Design, Groundwork RVA, Saving Our Youth, the CPDC, LISC, and Tricycle Gardens. On display in the 6PIC space were plans for architectural plans for local business improvements that community members voted on. The day was unusually hot but that didn't stop the talent show from continuing!
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