1/24/15

Community Brainstorming Sessions on Future of Shockoe Bottom

The Virginia Defender and Sacred Ground Historical Reclamation Project will host a series of community brainstorming session on the Future of Shockoe Bottom in the months leading up to April 3, 2015, historically known as the day the federal army marched into the city, ending the civil war and slavery in Richmond.

Also called Liberation Day, April 3rd will also be the centerpiece of a weekend during which the Future of Richmond’s Past coalition will host city-wide educational and commemorative activities that focus on the “A Richmond Journey: The End of the Civil War and Beginning of Freedom”.

The brainstorming sessions will be the Defenders’ contribution to a collaborative strategy launched, in part, by the selection of Shockoe Bottom as one of Virginia’s and America’s 11 most endangered historic sites by Preservation Virginia and the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

Following up on the National Trust’s focus group sessions and retreat in September 2014, and using the resulting “Guiding Principles” as a tool for greater public engagement and input, these sessions will allow Richmond residents, particularly it’s Black residents, to strategize on protecting Shockoe Bottom from destruction and offer alternative preservation and development ideas for what is recognized as an irreplaceable site of conscience.

Victory in the effort to stop a stadium from being built in historic Shockoe Bottom was long in coming, but only a first step. No less important is the next phase: community involvement.

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Learn about the "No Stadium in Shockoe Bottom" campaign at ShockoeBottom.blogspot.com