A bright light is on in a row of empty storefronts in the Highland Park neighborhood. It’s a Wednesday evening and a group of high schoolers are hovering around a table with markers, tracing paper, and floor plans of the 3000-square-foot space on Meadowbridge Road. Architect and Storefront board member Allison Powell hands a marker to one of these students, who elaborates on an idea for punctuating the cavernous space with bright colors and vertical text on the pillars. Another student chimes in with an idea to fill the parking lot with hammocks for reading. Everybody agrees on one thing: don’t build any walls here.
Potential location of the Six Points Innovation Center (6PIC) in the Highland Park neighborhood, the 3000 block of Meadowbridge Road.
This is a snapshot of the early phase of renovation for the 6 Points Innovation Center (6PIC), Storefront’s newest initiative supported by the Robins Foundation. Storefront will partner with Groundwork RVA, Saving Our Youth Virginia, Boaz & Ruth, and other organizations to create a new space for after school programming that operates at the intersection of design education and community engagement. Participants will enter the 6PIC as agents of change, and set the agenda for the community through design, planning, and organizing strategies. To start, the founding 6PIC team has been working closely with our team of architects to develop a conceptual design for the space.
Concept rendered by architect Burt Pinnock, based on sketches from the founding 6PIC team.
To make 6PIC a reality while sustaining our location in the Arts & Cultural District, we need your support. If it’s $500 or even $5, your donation is an investment in the ability for young people to connect more fully with urban planning and design. Storefront believes that design is not a luxury. Everyone should be able to realize the potential of the city — from the front porch, to the back yard, to the sidewalk, to the neighborhood.