News
Storefront for Community Design
Storefront Launches Roadmap for 3-year Plan

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.

Storefront Launches Roadmap for 3-year Plan
Community Design Archive, News, Impact Stories
Storefront for Community Design
Storefront Celebrates 10th Anniversary

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 Celebrates 10th Anniversary
News
Storefront for Community Design
Storefront Welcomes New Executive Director and ...

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.

News, Programs & Projects
Storefront for Community Design
Richmond Magazine: Designs Within Reach

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

Richmond Magazine: Designs Within Reach

Notes from the Field: September Program Highlights

Notes from the Field: September Program Highlights

Storefront for Community Design inspires equitable community-driven design through our low-cost design and planning assistance programs and design education programs. Check out our September Notes from the Field to learn about recent updates from our programs.

Design Education: City Builders Design Workshop

We convene project-based learning opportunities that focus on real world issues in the built environment and encourage youth and young adults to discover and design solutions that create effective change in their lives and communities. Learn more about City Builders Design Workshop.


Summer Session: Design Camp

Storefront for Community Design hosted a week-long summer City Builders Design camp that invited youth from all over the city to join. The goals of the summer design camp were to learn about design process and gain exposure to design professions. Using the graphic novel No Small Plans, participants explored urban planning while following a group of teens in their discovery of Chicago’s past, present, and future. They were also tasked to explore the Jackson Ward community and design an empty lot at N 2nd Street and Jackson street.

A mOb jOurnal

A mOb jOurnal

When I started at VCU, I knew I was passionate about sustainable design, but I wasn’t sure what professional path that would lead me down. Biology, engineering, interior design, architecture, and urban planning are all fields that have a significant impact on the built environment, but urban and regional studies was unlike any one of my interests alone. It represented designing with community values at the core of every intention.

Update: Participatory Budgeting Initiative Kicks Off this Fall

Update: Participatory Budgeting Initiative Kicks Off this Fall

Participatory Budgeting (PB) is a new paradigm providing an avenue for community members to engage in a democratic process that gives residents direct access to their tax dollars and allows them to guide where that money will go.

In October 2019, Richmond City Council passed a resolution calling on the city’s administration to set aside money each year for the initiative. It outlined a process for participatory budgeting in the City, but due to COVID-19, the initiative was put on hold. In 2021, the initiative has picked up steam and Storefront for Community Design has joined a team of community collaborators to convene, develop, and implement the process in Richmond. PB can be a complicated process to understand, so we encourage you to keep reading to learn more about PB, how it is being implemented in Richmond, and ways to get involved.

Become a Design Mentor for City Builders

Are you a professional designer and interested in getting involved in our City Builders Design youth program? We are looking for three (3) qualified design professionals to become design mentors during our 12-week program this fall. Design mentors will receive a stipend for participation along with the reward of developing the next generation of designers. Apply by Friday, August 26 to be considered.


Design Mentor Roles and Responsibilities

  • Provide mentorship to students throughout the 12-week program

  • Assist the Youth Innovation Director and the Storefront team to design hands-on activities and implement them during workshops. 

  • Assist students with projects, studio time, and various tasks during the weekly workshop.

  • Review student projects and provide constructive feedback.

Design Mentor Requirements

  • Currently working or has experience working in a design career such as architecture, landscape architecture, urban planning, graphic design, etc. 

  • Commit to a minimum of 10 in-person workshop sessions (2.5 hours each) out of the 12 workshops offered. Weekly workshops will take place on Tuesday or Thursday evenings this fall. 

  • Be available to meet for two hours between workshops as needed.

  • Experience with teens ages 13-18 preferred but not required.

  • Pass a background check.


The City Builders fall semester will take place at Storefront’s office at 205 E Broad Street. The program will kick off on September 29 and will run through mid-December.

About City Builders Design Workshop:
The City Builders Design Workshop is a semester-long program for teens ages 13-18 with a vision to engage the next generation of designers and grow urban youth leaders.

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2022 Golden Hammer Awards Call for Submissions Now Open

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Storefront for Community Design and Historic Richmond will partner for a sixth year to host the awards program to recognize professionals and community members improving our neighborhoods.

Do you have a project that was completed after January 1, 2021? Submit your project by September 12 at 11:59pm to be in the running for a Golden Hammer Award!

About the Golden Hammer Awards
The Golden Hammer Awards were started in 2000 with a goal of honoring excellence in neighborhood revitalization projects throughout Greater Richmond. This year's award event will take place on Thursday, October 27 from 6-8pm at Hardywood Richmond!

Categories include:

  • Best Restoration: Includes restoration by a homeowner, contractor, or developer. Includes historic tax credit projects.

  • Best Adaptive Reuse: Includes projects that were rehabilitated for a new use, multi-family residential, and historic tax credit projects welcome.

  • Best New Construction: Includes neighborhood infill.

  • Best Placemaking & Urban Design: Arts and culture projects, park and green-space projects, transportation and infrastructure projects, or other neighborhood enhancing features including large scale (i.e., parks, urban streetscapes, etc.) and small scale (i.e., community garden, grass roots programming, etc.).

  • Best Residential: Single-family residential projects.

Sponsorship Opportunities! 

Annual support for our organization, programming, projects, and events is critical. Interested in becoming a sponsor for the Golden Hammer Awards? Check out our sponsorship benefits and opportunities for more information.

Poster Show: A Covid Empowerment Project

At Storefront, we know all too well that the built environment around us directly affects our well-being. We aim to inspire community-driven design throughout Richmond while engaging the next generation of designers. This spring semester, two of our programs worked on parallel health messaging projects that came together as a poster show, activating a public space in a new way.

We learned that the Richmond Henrico Health District was seeing extreme covid health disparities and low use of covid mitigation and prevention measures by youth and Black communities. That, covid fatigue and racism being declared a public health crisis underscored the greater question at hand. How do you encourage groups to take advantage of the resources available and be empowered to make informed decisions?

mOb studio and City Builders set out to explore that question. They used visuals to relay health messaging related to accurate covid health information and overall wellness for the community. 

City Builders Design, a semester-long program that focuses on real world issues in the built environment, met weekly after school to design a solution. The youth ages 13-18 explored their community and learned from designers in the field of architecture, fashion design, graphic design, and urban planning. By the end of the semester, they had learned a new way to communicate health messages, using the built environment and empowering them to use the resources around them to create awareness.

“Teaching with City Builders reminded me that not only should we include our children in the process of designing better things for our cities but also to become better designers we need to awaken the child in ourselves. -”
— John Malinoski

A team from mOb studio, a service learning class through our VCUarts partnership, worked directly with RHHD to create and pilot a Covid and Public Health awareness campaign. Through conversations with RHHD partners, and help from a professional mentor, they came up with a visual communication style, health messaging and potential poster sites.

Both groups were guided by a local design professional, John Malinoski who mentored the mOb team and led workshops for the City Builders youth. Both projects focused on providing exposure and education to health awareness, equity, disparities, & outcomes. We couldn't help but notice that following a design process and incorporating hands-on making naturally allowed us to pause and create space for intentional conversations about health/wellness.

The site-specific installation and additional posters were contributed by pirates, a poster based design collective that aims to create positive visual communication and temporary built environments for important issues in our present lives. 

City Builders Design students, m0bstudents, and pirates displayed their posters on a hot day in May along Meadowbridge Rd. The work from both groups came together in a poster show event that showcased and brought in partners to amplify resources. Light refreshments were provided by the Kitchen Magician, a local DJ played tunes, and Hope Pharmacy provided vaccinations at the site. The students also participated in a wheat pasting workshop led by John Malinoski to learn a technique for applying posters to the built environment, while community members were given an opportunity to screen print a health message on a reusable bag provided by Studio Two Three.

Thank you to all of those who participated in the Poster Show: A Covid Empowerment Project.

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Storefront Celebrates 10 Years with Exhibition

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Storefront Celebrates 10 Years with Exhibition

On May 6, under stormy skies, Storefront for Community Design hosted a block party at 205 E Broad Street and was honored to see so many supporters show up to celebrate! Guests enjoyed food truck fare, music, desserts, t-shirts, great conversations, and the unveiling of our 10 Years, 10 Stories of Impact Exhibition. Thank you to Baskervill, our exhibition sponsor, along with our other event sponsors: Singlestone, Century Construction Company, Inc., Gilbane, Lynx Ventures, Timmons Group, Hanbury, and Anova.

It has been amazing to see the impact that Storefront has made across Richmond. Thank you to the Founders of Storefront and VUCarts Middle of Broad (mOb) studio for taking your initial visions and evolving them over the last ten years. Richmonds is growing rapidly, and our work is now more important than ever. With a new strategic plan, we are poised to inspire equitable community-driven design and engage the next generation of designers.

If you were unable to make the block party celebration, don’t fret! The 10 Years, 10 Stories of Impact exhibition will be up through September. Stop by during the next RVA First Friday to check it out. Also, we still have t-shirts for sale so get one while you can! Also, learn more by downloading the 10th Anniversary Celebration Event Program and check out the photos below highlighting a wonderful evening with friends of Storefront.

Notes from the Field: June Program Highlights

Notes from the Field: June Program Highlights

Storefront for Community Design inspires equitable community-driven design through our low-cost design and planning assistance programs and design education programs. Check out our June Notes from the Field to learn about recent updates from our programs.

Design Education: City Builders Design Workshop

We convene project-based learning opportunities that focus on real world issues in the built environment and encourage youth and young adults to discover and design solutions that create effective change in their lives and communities. Learn more about City Builders Design Workshop.


Spring Session: A Health Messaging Campaign

This spring, the City Builders Design Workshop focused on how the built environment affects the health of a community. Students living in the City of Richmond ages 13-18 explored the foundation of a healthy city and discovered how social determinants of health play an important role. According to the World Health Organization, social determinants of health include factors like socioeconomic status, education, neighborhood and physical environment, employment, and social support networks, as well as access to health care.

COVID-19 has impacted our built environment and forced us to rethink how we use spaces. City Builders Design students, in partnership with the Richmond Henrico Health District, a graphic design mentor, VCU design students, and professional designers, created unique posters to communicate health messaging in their own neighborhood. A city is only as healthy as the people that live, learn, work and play in it!

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Summer 2022 Volunteer Opportunities

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Are you passionate about community voice, equitable design, and collaborative partnerships? We are seeking volunteers with varying interests and expertise to help us this summer, so don’t be bashful to get involved! Upcoming opportunities include:

  1. Design Education - City Builders Design: Help us build the new curriculum for our City Builders fall 2022 and spring 2023 semester.

  2. Community Visioning: Help us plan, design, and host small engagement events in Jackson Ward.

  3. Design Session: Provide one-on-one advice, conceptual sketches, and plans of actions throughout the year.

See below for more information. If you are interested in volunteering, be sure to sign up by Friday, May 27. If you have any questions, please email hello@storefrontrichmond.org. We look forward to hearing from you!

 

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Note: to sign up to volunteer, follow this link to complete the form.