[10 Years, 10 Stories of Impact series]
image: Ms. Thompson in her Church Hill home
Ms. Mary Thompson has lived in her Church Hill home for 69 years and invested long-term in the community to energize and inspire residents to advocate for positive change. She remembers Church Hill as a beautiful community with vibrant local businesses like the ice cream shop and bakery that disappeared over time as urban blight increased. Ms. Thompson was serious about bringing change to her neighborhood and was committed to collaborating with non-profits, community developers, and community partners to create a vision shaped by community voice.
Storefront for Community Design was lucky enough to have Ms. Thompson as a founding member who brought her experience and voice to the table as the organization began working in Richmond’s East End. Throughout Storefront’s early years, she continued to be an advocate for our mission and even used our design and planning services to help create a vision to remodel her kitchen.
Staff and founding members recently visited with Ms. Thompson to discuss her experience with Storefront and see her kitchen project that was first envisioned through Storefront’s Design Session Studio program. Burt Pinnock, Founding Member and Design Session volunteer, worked with Ms. Thompson to develop a vision and design that she could take to local hardware stores and contractors to select materials and finalize details.
Click on the audio link below, or download the transcript, to learn about Ms. Thompson time with Storefront for Community Design and discover how her kitchen went from an idea to reality.
image: Founding members (from left to right) Lane Pearson, Cynthia Newbille, Mary Thompson, and Burt Pinnock
image: It may have been many years since the vision was first drawn, but Ms. Thompson still thanks Burt Pinnock, Design Session volunteer, for helping to bring her idea to reality
WE NEED YOUR SUPPORT!
We can only continue because of your generous support that makes it possible for Storefront to provide low-cost design and planning services like Ms. Thompson’s Kitchen. In honor of our 10th anniversary and to ensure future funding, we are laying the foundation for the next 10 years of community impact. Money raised will be invested in a variety of ways that, taken together, are designed to increase Storefront's mission and programming that will bring positive change to Richmond communities over the next 10 years.
10 YEARS, 10 STORIES OF IMPACT
Follow Storefront for Community Design’s 10 Years, 10 Stories of Impact series to learn more about our impact over the last ten years and check out a timeline of milestones for an overview of our work.
01 | Storefront is Born
02 | Ms. Thompson’s Kitchen
03 | mOb + Storefront = ❤️
04 | Recovery by Design
05 | A Celebration of Community Design
06 | Designing an Innovation Center
07 | Building a Brave Space
08 | General Demotion / General Devotion
09 | Community Driven Design Process
10 | A Vision for the Future