#HowWeHeal: Richmond

Rumors of War, Kehinde Wiley’s permanent installation at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in December 2019. Photo: Sionne Neely — *Rumors of War*, Kehinde Wiley’s permanent installation at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in December 2019. Photo: Sionne Neely

Richmond, Virginia is a place steeped in complicated racial histories that include being the second largest port of enslavement of African persons in the U.S. and the capital of the confederacy in the South. Virginia is also a geographical anchor for the genocide and displacement of indigenous persons, land, cultures and other resources.

The work that Initiatives of Change USA engages in as one of 14 U.S. city leads for W.K. Kellogg Foundation’s Truth, Racial Healing and Transformation (TRHT) is to acknowledge these complex histories honestly and with fortitude about the possibilities of sustainable equity and justice. We do this by also providing space for inclusion, particularly for marginalized communities to lead, process and activate healing. By amplifying our strategies of facilitation and dialogue through creative expression, arts activism and multimedia communication, we are expanding and deepening connection and growth with new groups of people.

The video below gives a snapshot of this work with IofC team members Sionne Rameah Neely and Allan-Charles Chipman (also IofC’s Community Trustbuilding Fellowship Alumni) and community partners Duron Chavis (Community Trustbuilding Fellowship Alumni and Narrative Change Collaborative Architect) and Alfonso Perez Acosta (IofC collaboration on Migration Flow exhibition, Call and Response workshop and Mi Casa es Su Casa workshop).