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
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
Storefront is undergoing a strategic planning process over the next month or so and NEXT WEEK we will be hosting three listening sessions. Please attend the session that best fits with your schedule. We are excited to invite you to join the conversation and help us plan, grow and build a better Richmond.
The three focus group sessions will be hosted at Storefront on Broad Street (205 E Broad Street)
January 22, 5:30pm to 7pm
January 23, 9am to 10:30am
January 25, 2:30pm to 4pm
Feel free to attend the session that best suits your schedule.
You can RSVP here:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/storefront-strategic-planning-workshops-tickets-54872700725
Submission Deadline December 1, 2018 at 11:59PM EST!
With less than two weeks remaining for submissions for the national competition, we want to remind you to register and/or submit your vision reimagining Monument Avenue and participate in a design ideas competition to facilitate constructive dialogue around the historic street, Confederate history, urban planning, and public art.
Or, if you know anyone who you think might be interested, connect them to the competition!
We are concurrently running a high school ideas competition called Youth Monumental to design and model the next monument for Monument Avenue. Any high school student from around the Richmond Region are invited to submit their design and model/sculpture of the next monument on Monument Avenue. Submissions are due December 15.
More information about the high school competition, submissions, requirements, and an upcoming workshop at the Six Points Innovation Center (6PIC) can be found at www.monumentavenuegdgd.com/youth
Burt Pinnock’s Veils of Ignorance: A Collection of Works 2004-2018 is on display this month at the Storefront for Community Design downtown at 205 E Broad Street, Richmond, VA.
On the one hand: Philosopher John Rawls purports that to develop a truly equitable social contract, we must imagine ourselves behind a veil of ignorance. We know nothing of ourselves, our natural abilities or position in society or sex or race or nationality. We only know that people are simply rational, free and moral. Now create a society.
On the other hand: In 1922, the monument of Booker T. Washington Lifting the Veil was dedicated in Tuskegee, Alabama, with an inscription that reads, “He lifted the veil of ignorance from his people and pointed the way to progress through education and industry.”
These projects from architect Burt Pinnock evoke the sentiment of the dropped veil while simultaneously exploring the possibilities that arise when that veil is ultimately lifted. Collectively, they strive, as Booker T. Washington did, to educate and reveal truths about our history and who we are in an effort to get us to John Rawls’ vision of designing a more equitable society.
On the one hand…
But on the other.
Burt Pinnock, b. 1964, Tuskegee, Alabama
Burt Pinnock is an architect in Richmond whose work evokes the sentiment of the dropped veil while simultaneously exploring the possibilities that arise when that veil is ultimately lifted. Collectively, they strive, as Booker T. Washington did, to educate and reveal truths about our history and who we are in an effort to get us to John Rawl’s vision of designing a more equitable society.
OPENING First Friday
November 2
from 6:30 to 8:30
205 E. Broad Street
Storefront for Community Design + MoB Studio
Historic Richmond and Storefront for Community Design are excited to partner again to host the 2018 Golden Hammer Awards honoring architectural preservation and neighborhood revitalization in the greater Richmond area.
Join us THIS THURSDAY from 6pm to 8pm at Monumental Church (1224 E. Broad Street, Richmond, Virginia) as we recognize professionals working in neighborhood revitalization, blight reduction, and historic preservation in the Richmond region!
With over 30 nominations submitted, specialty cocktails by Belle Isle Moonshine you wont want to miss this event! Purchase your tickets today!
Free parking: Virginia Department of Transportation Parking Lot located at 1401 E. Broad Street
Historic Richmond + Storefront for Community Design will co-host the Golden Hammer
Awards for the second year on Thursday, November 1, 2018 at the historic Monumental Church. Call for submissions will close September 15.
Historic Richmond Executive Director Cyane Crump said, “As Richmond-area nonprofits with interests in historic preservation and neighborhood revitalization, we are delighted to co-present the awards to recognize professionals working in neighborhood revitalization, blight reduction and historic preservation in the Richmond region.” Projects completed after January 1, 2017 located in the greater Richmond area (City of Richmond, Counties of Chesterfield, Hanover, and Henrico) will be considered for the categories of: Best Restoration, Best Adaptive Reuse, Best New Construction, Best Placemaking and a new category Best Residential focusing on single-family projects.
“With over 45 submissions last year, we are excited to see which projects in the area will be nominated,” said Ryan Rinn, Executive Director of Storefront for Community Design. “Teamwork and partnerships have always been critical to preservation and placemaking in Richmond and we look forward to another year of high quality submissions.”
We are open for submissions and the portal will close September 15, 2018 at midnight. Applications for the 2018 Golden Hammer Awards can be submitted through Historic Richmond's website.
As one of the proud "parent" organizations of the Six Points Innovation Center (6PIC), Storefront for Community Design is celebrating 6PIC's 1-year birthday by working to secure many more years of youth empowerment and community ownership in Highland Park.
Join our 100x100 Challenge this June to raise funds for 6PIC's operating costs ( think: power, water, Internet + the amazing people that keep it running seamlessly every day).
It's easy: be one of the 100 people to give $100 to Storefront, so we can keep the 6PIC goodness flowing for years to come.
www.6picrva.org/donate
or donate directly through our Facebook Page or Storefront's donation page
Engage the Foundation is launching a the Young Business Builders program at a new space called Workshop this summer at 420 West Broad Street. The space will be a programmable creative space and boutique available to youth entrepreneurs. Workshop will house an income stream that will fund the Young Business Builders Program to innovate more socially responsible youth driven business.
While they already have some pledged assistance from contractors, they need an interior designer to help them outfit their space. The space will house a storefront, meeting space, screen-printing set up, and a photography studio in the back. Their soft opening is scheduled for July 3rd with a formal opening in August.
Some construction is already underway in the front of the space
Since its’ inception in 2011, Engage, The Foundation (Engage) has focused on connecting communities, schools and universities to resources designed to improve individual stability and family structure. Through the Young Business Builders Program, they equip youth and families with the tools needed to turn passions into profit through training certifications, education and mentorship. Community members, participating college students and recent graduates have become linked with a diverse network of professionals who work with them on achieving their career aspirations in a socially responsible manner.
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.
6PIC's one year anniversary is June 6th! Come say Happy Birthday!
Join us on Wednesday, June 6th 5:30-8:00 for food, dancing, door prizes and 6PIC updates!
Can't meet us? There are still ways to support 6PIC and youth empowerment in Highland Park. Storefront for Community Design is celebrating 6PIC’s 1-year birthday by working to secure many more years of youth empowerment and community ownership in Highland Park.
Join our 100x100 Challenge this June to raise funds for 6PIC’s operating costs (think: power, water, Internet + the amazing people that keep it running seamlessly every day).
It’s easy: be one of 100 people to give $100* to Storefront, so we can keep the 6PIC goodness flowing for years to come.
www.6picrva.org/donate/
*Any amount is much appreciated—we just like round numbers.
Complete the form to receive email updates from Storefront for Community Design about events, programs, resources, and volunteer opportunities. You will receive an email confirmation once you have registered.
Note: to sign up to volunteer, follow this link to complete the form.
