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!
image: Timeline of Storefront Milestones
2009: The Beginning
Sometime in 2009, Storefront Founding member Burt Pinnock, FAIA, NOMA, received a call from Cynthia Newbille, 7th Voter District Council Representative. The Old and Historic District (O&HD) had been expanded in her district and she wanted to figure out how to bring design services to her constituents, many of whom lived below the poverty line. With the added design overlay of an O&HD, things like adding a ramp or replacing windows became that much more complicated for community members.
Soon after, he connected with others who were convinced that a city-wide design center was desperately needed. With a vote of confidence from the City Council, Storefront was founded on February 14, 2011 in the East End of Richmond on 25th Street. Additional founding Partners included community members, members of the Alliance to Conserve Old Richmond Neighborhoods, affordable housing developers, City of Richmond Planning and Economic Development departments, members from VCU’s Urban and Regional Planning program, and practicing architects, landscape architects, urban planners, and preservationists.
Storefront set out to make design accessible to all “for the love of our city” by providing pro bono design and planning assistance to support local businesses, residences, organizations, and neighborhoods. Think of Storefront as the architecture, design, and planning equivalent of legal aid for a free clinic. Our services would soon connect Richmonders to one another in a variety of ways, with the end goal of seeing an improved quality of life for all residents of the City of Richmond.
2011-2014
In 2011, Storefront’s programming included Community Workshops, Community Improvement Days, and Design Session. To this day, our Community Workshops and Design Sessions have been the lynchpin throughout our programming. Community workshops have facilitated public input and engagement offerings for neighborhood, civic, merchant, and friends’ associations throughout the city; Design Session has provided a pro bono design assistance program that offers one-on-one advise, sketches, and plans of action from volunteer design and planning professionals; and Community Improvement Days have created a way of gathering volunteers to add fresh coats of paint, plant trees and flowers, and pick-up trash in our neighborhoods. Since 2011, Storefront has completed over 300 Design Sessions, over 25 community engagement processes and workshops, and 10 design education series with an estimated value of services well over $300,000
In 2012, Storefront partnered with mOb studiO (short for “Middle of Broad”), an interdisciplinary, service-learning design lab consisting of three VCUarts design departments: fashion, graphic, and interior design. The studio provides the opportunity for up to 30 students to participate during the semester. After joining forces, we moved our office to the Art & Cultural District at 205 E. Broad Street creating a collaborative workspace with mOb studiO. Since our conjunction, we continue to administer our community design and civic advocacy programs from this space and open our doors every First Friday to showcase design, process, and community engagement work as part of the Arts & Cultural District’s Art Walk where more than 8,000 people have visited our storefront.
image: mOb studiO; Final poster project to educate community members on the benefits of a food forest
2014-2017
In July 2014, we were named “Best of Richmond” in the categories of Urban Planning and Community Development by Richmond Magazine. At that time, we also embarked in a three-year partnership with Richmond Behavioral Health Authority (RBHA) and mOb studiO to co-create and destigmatize mental illness through our Recovery by Design program. After a successful first year, we received funding from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) to continue engaging in “making” with over 90 participants recovering from addiction, intellectual disabilities, and mental illness. Through pre- and post-interviews, we learned that participants showed improvements in sociability and expressed general excitement in skill building.
While our clients are Richmonders, we are part of a larger national movement of community design. In 2015, we hosted the Association for Community Design’s national conference, drawing more than 175 attendees from 18 major cities where we had the opportunity to talk with our national neighbors as well as our next door neighbors in the heart of Richmond’s Art & Cultural District.
In our early years, we began focusing on community organizing in Northside’s Highland Park neighborhood where we built on six years of engagement efforts as part of the Highland Park Quality of Life development and implementation plan. A major request of the quality of life planning process was to strengthen the neighborhood youth. With this in mind, Storefront led the idea of the Six Points Innovation Center (6PIC), a teen serving, non-profit collaborative in Highland Park.
In 2016, Storefront received funding through the Robins Foundation Community Innovation Grant to open 6PIC in partnership with four non-profits including Art 180, Groundwork RVA, Saving Our Youth Virginia, and Untold RVA. After additional fundraising, design, and build-out of the space, 6PIC opened in June 2017 providing a resource and engagement outlet that serves an average of 20 youth per day while providing a space for Storefront’s presence in the Northside. Since opening, 6PIC continues to be an evolving partnership between Storefront, Groundwork RVA, Saving Our Youth Virginia, ART 180, Boaz & Ruth, Community 50/50, Untold RVA, the Association of Black Social Workers (ABSW), RVA Rapid Transit, Virginia LISC, Community Preservation and Development Corporation (CPDC), the Highland park Quality of Life Team, and Richmond Public High School students.
image: Youth Innovation programming at Six Points Innovation Center (6PIC)
Since 2000, the Golden Hammer Awards have honored excellence in neighborhood revitalization projects throughout greater Richmond. In 2017, the Alliance to Conserve Old Richmond Neighborhoods (ACORN) disbanded and Storefront (with the support from Better Housing Coalition) and Historic Richmond partnered to administer and co-host the Golden Hammer Awards and gearing up for our fifth year of successfully highlighting excellence in our communities.
2018-2020
In 2018, 6PIC partners completed a strategic planning and evaluation process to define how the layered, integrated services of multiple non-profits can overlap and intentionally improve equity and health in the community. This launched the City Builders program with support from Richmond Memorial Health Foundation and Capital One. The vision of City Builders realizes 6PIC’s mission of growing urban youth leaders and advances civic power for Northside residents through place-making projects and neighborhood-based skill building in program areas offered by 6PIC partners.
In 2019, Storefront and mOb studiO hosted a nationwide architecture and youth competition funded by the NEA Artworks to consider how to re-present the history and figures monumentalized on Monument Avenue. The competition, called Monument Avenue: General Demotion/General Devotion, asked participants to reconsider Monument Avenue through its role as a historic urban boulevard, its viability as a 5.4-mile interurban connector, its presence in Richmond given the city’s emergence as a diverse and progressive city, its significance in the history of the United States, and the debate about Confederate statues in public spaces. The exhibition of competition finalists opened on February 14, 2019 at the Valentine Museum.
image: Monument Avenue: General Demotion/General Devotion Exhibition at the Valentine Museum
In late fall 2019, Storefront’s Board of Directors and staff engaged in a workshop to help shape and guide the Strategic Planning process and the future of Storefront programming. Key partners and stakeholders throughout the community were involved to develop a plan that represented the transition from idea-rich conversations to a strategy that would strengthen the organization and hone our impact in the future. The Board for Directors and staff have used this document to begin program implementation and plan for future staffing and operations.
2021: Here’s to Ten More Years!
In early 2021, Storefront announced the selection of our new Executive Director and Center Director making this an ideal moment to reflect upon the progress we’ve made to assist in creating more equitable communities and establish a vision moving forward; an opportunity to discover how we can better align and advocate to the current needs of our communities and future development trends around the City of Richmond. Planning has begun on the following goals and we look forward to working with you to realize our vision in the coming years.
Craft Storefront’s brand messaging to engage individuals unfamiliar with our purpose
Build on the successes of our Design Session program by increasing opportunities for low-cost design assistance
Develop an innovative community engagement methodology for Storefront programming and to share with community members
Increase the Youth Innovation Studio through robust curriculum development and innovative design programming
Develop new resources and toolkits to share with neighbors around the city
Let’s get to work!
Press Release