community Archives

Be a Changemaker In This Year’s Tom Tom Festival

Laura Drummond | September 24, 2020

Topics: community, tom tom cities rising summit, tom tom festival, tom tom festival 2020, tom tom foundation

The Tom Tom Foundation’s Cities Rising Summit is a seven-week, free, virtual event that offers opportunities to connect, collaborate, and confront critical issues impacting cities today.

The Tom Tom Foundation hosts events each year focused on innovation, creativity, and entrepreneurship, bringing together multi-sector city leaders from across the country to exchange ideas and develop solutions.

“A hometown is the product of the people who live there,” Executive Director Paul Beyer said. “We care about citizens who are engaged in envisioning the future of their community. Creating bridges for people to connect is important.”

This year, Tom Tom’s Cities Rising Summit is completely virtual — and free. The goal is to increase accessibility, ensuring all people have a seat at the table to discuss critical issues brought to the fore by the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2020 movement for racial justice.

*PHOTO: Tom Tom Foundation Cities Rising Summit*

“We are trying to broaden access as much as possible, to empower change-makers across the country to come together,” Beyer said. “This new virtual format is amplifying and extending the number of connections that are possible.” Marketing Manager Chelsea Woodfolk added, “We’re in a very difficult time right now. Not everyone can afford to participate in programming if we were to put a price tag on it. By keeping it free, everyone can be a part of it.”

The Cities Rising Summit kicked off on September 15 and runs through October 30. The event features 50 sessions over seven weeks, with each week exploring a different theme: like criminal justice reform, education, applied machine learning, healthcare, localism, and more.

“What we felt people needed most was an opportunity to connect around these issues, and through relationship building, try to come up with some new ideas,” Program Manager Ben Wilkes said.

One week is devoted to small businesses and how to support them, particularly those owned by people of color. Speakers include September Hargrove, Vice President & Head of Michigan Philanthropy at JPMorgan Chase; Wendy Jackson, Managing Director for the Detroit Program of the Kresge Foundation; and Nick Davis, Founder & Photographer of Sidekick RVA. Discussion topics include creative pivots, small business recovery, and the future of restaurants.

Another week focuses on the importance of arts in the community. Hear from Twiggy Pucci Garçon — community health specialist, organizer, filmmaker, and runway consultant for Ryan Murphy’s hit FX series, POSE — about protecting authenticity, creating space for others, and how artists can come together to create change. Dominic Asmall Willsdon, Executive Director of the Institute for Contemporary Art at VCU, will participate in a panel discussion about how art institutions can be better community partners. Discussions will also include ways creatives can give back to their communities, and how artists can build their networks through telling their own stories.

The Cities Rising Summit covers many topics and issues, but there is one common thread that runs through all of the events: interpersonal connection.

“This is a great platform for people to share their ideas, hear other people’s opinions, and acknowledge that we need to work together to achieve the goals we want to see,” Woodfolk said.

To ensure that connection isn’t weakened by a virtual event, Tom Tom organizers innovated ways to communicate and collaborate. “All of our sessions are live,” said Wilkes. “We thought it was important, for the people who are able to make it, to have organic input into the conversation. It’s for them and about them.” Attendees can participate in real-time conversations with individuals from around the country, including elected officials, entrepreneurs, doctors, educators, non-profit organizers, data scientists, and more.

Each session includes opportunities for engagement. Breakout meetings after each panel make it possible for discussions to continue. Weekly changemaker sessions bring together participants to form concrete action items around each theme, and virtual mixers offer informal avenues to meet.

“Everyone needs to be a part of the conversation,” Woodfolk said. “We’re bringing in leaders, but we also need constituents to be part of the conversation. That’s what we’re trying to achieve with this programming — making sure everyone can have a say in things that are affecting them.”

If you can’t attend the live events, you still have an opportunity to get in on the conversation. Each session will be available on YouTube, with discussions continuing on social media.

“A lot of these sessions will have an element of positivity, of hope,” Wilkes said. “If all people can do is plug in to one session and feel inspired, I think we’ve done our job.”

To learn more about the Tom Tom Foundation, visit their website here. Specific information about the Cities Rising Summit, with speakers, event times, and registration, can be found here.

Indigenous, Woman-Owned Resilience For 25 Years

Jamie McEachin | September 22, 2020

Topics: alternatives richmond va, Carytown, carytown stores, community, ethical sourcing, guadalupe ramirez alternatives

How often do we know the origins of the products we buy? At AlterNatives Boutique, the answer is every time. We caught up with owner Guadalupe Ramirez as she embarks on her 25th year in Carytown.

The story of AlterNatives Boutique begins and ends with one idea: if you give someone the opportunity for education and the access to possibility, they will be empowered to help themselves.

Guadalupe Ramirez, owner of the Carytown boutique, remembers tagging along with her parents and grandparents as a child in Guatemala. They attended community meetings for their family’s cooperative in the small village of Tejutla, located in the Western Highlands.

Ramirez’s family worked to help locals during the devastation of the Guatemalan Civil War. Their involvement would eventually inspire Ramirez when she opened her ethically-sourced boutique: a person of color helping other people of color to aid their communities.

“[It’s important to] not just have the complex of a white savior,” Ramirez said, “but to also learn a little bit more that as people from the area, who understand more of these struggles — we can have a better impact.”

Ramirez believes in the importance of knowing the origins of the products you buy. Often, she says, ignorance is the reason that the overwhelming majority of consumers don’t know or care if they buy from unethical sources. AlterNatives seeks to combat that. With fair trade jewelry, clothing, and home decor, the store’s products are transparently produced, and their creators are paid fairly.

“Many times, we make poor choices not because we want to… but because we don’t know exactly what’s happening,” Ramirez said. “My mission is to communicate and educate about how those items are made. The person who made the item has a biography; they have wishes and energy that they put into the items.”

The marketplace is sacred to Ramirez, she noted, for exchanging energy between the creators of her products and the people who buy them.

Ramirez’s interest in social work was fostered by the peasant’s movement in Guatemala. It was revolutionary, but not for the reasons the Guatemalan army believed. According to Ramirez, instead of the communist group the army thought they were targeting, the movement was a cooperative of highland farmers joining forces. They wanted better crop pricing, and to be educated by a group of Belgian nuns.

“My parents organized in order to find good prices for the crops,” Ramirez said. “It was the help of some nuns from Belgium that gave them the opportunity to learn bookkeeping, organizational, and business skills to put together this cooperative. Between meetings my parents’ trainings around different communities, I was along, trying to be quiet and entertain myself.”

Ramirez’s family was targeted by the military, resulting in the death of her uncle and threats to her father.

“I was trying to find a job and help my parents at the same time,” she said. “My father was receiving death threats, and he needed to flee the country. I had to find a job and try to support my sisters.”

Despite her family’s cooperative being decidedly pro-market and pro-business, Ramirez believes the army’s persecution became a sad example of harm done by a lack of education and fear of the unknown.

“In reality, for us and for my town where I come from, we were looking for better prices for goods [and pooled resources],” Ramirez said. “You pay what you can, and support this movement.”

When she was 16, Ramirez left her hometown to continue her education with a teaching diploma. By the age of 18, she was teaching a second-grade class to send money to family in her hometown, struggling after her father was forced into hiding. Her attempt to study sociology at the University of San Carlos ended abruptly when the army targeted the department, kidnapping and possibly killing some of their faculty.

“When we came back to the university to do our report, the humanities faculty was taken over by the Guatemalan Army,” Ramirez said. “They said ‘One more step on this school and you’ll be killed.’ Everyone left that night for good.”

Ramirez continued her work following in her family’s footsteps, working with marginalized groups in the wake of Guatemala’s devastating civil war. She aided orphans in the Guatemalan jungle, widows of political violence in a small Mayan town, and children of plantation workers by teaching them while their parents fought for rights in the capital.

In the face of tragedy, Ramirez’s upbringing in a small peasant town has taught her resilience and resolve to help others. These traits have helped her guide AlterNatives through a 2007 fire, the Great Recession in 2008, and now through COVID-19 harming small businesses.

“[This resilience] is about always learning to adapt to the next challenge, and become stronger than before,” Ramirez said. “We need the opportunity to learn things… and adjust to the market again. We need variety. Then there will be more creativity.”

Ramirez’s husband, Ben Blevins, traveled to Guatemala as a human rights observer after his graduation from the University of Richmond. The couple decided to settle in Richmond, and eventually she became a licensed peddler to sell cloth woven in Guatemala by women who needed funds to recover from an unsuccessful potato farming business.

“The concept that only white people can help brown people is not really the truth,” Ramirez said. “That was my understanding. thought, ‘Why can’t I help my own people? Why does it have to be a white person to save a brown person?”

After years of selling handmade items on the streets of Carytown and in front of Plan 9 Records, Ramirez was able to rent her first storefront. The brick-and-mortar location for AlterNatives was born. Located at 3320 West Cary St., the building called to Ramirez with a mural of a jungle while she was still peddling her fair trade cloth and jewelry.

While Ramirez said the streets of Richmond were generally welcoming, she did experience racism and distrust from many of her original patrons as a peddler. She was often asked about the percentage of sales going back to the women producing the items, and some customers seemed wary of her helping other people of color.

Despite those instances of racism, Ramirez thinks Richmond — and especially Carytown — has an open-mindedness that helped AlterNatives survive through many challenges in its 25 years. Her husband often jokes about Ramirez being a hippie at heart. She thinks her nature of love and understanding is the reason AlterNatives will continue to thrive.

“We are excited,” Ramirez said. “We are getting ready for a new chapter in our lives.”

To learn more about AlterNatives, find the store on their website, Facebook, and Instagram.

A Shield And A Crown

Robin Schwartzkopf | September 7, 2020

Topics: angela patton, art, community, face masks richmond va, face shield flower crown, Girls for A Change, Hamilton Glass, larkin garbee, richmond va coronavirus, richmond va face shields

Local entrepreneur Larkin Garbee teamed up with Girls For a Change and artist Hamilton Glass to create face shields that double as flower crowns: keeping the community safe, and teaching innovation along the way.

A year ago, personal protective equipment (PPE) would not have been on many people’s fall accessory lists. But the coronavirus pandemic has made widespread use of face shields, masks, and other safety items critical to public health. With kids returning to virtual and in-person learning, entrepreneur Larkin Garbee paired up with Girls for a Change CEO Angela Patton and artist Hamilton Glass to design and produce a flower-adorned face shield that could raise funds — and save lives.

When Garbee started making face shields in March, it was to support hospitals that were running low on gear in critical times. Her sister and brother-in-law, both employed in medical fields, shared concerns about being completely out of face shields. So Garbee, using her background in entrepreneurship, started a “Buy One, Give One” program to cover the cost of producing the masks. For every mask purchased, one would be donated to an essential employee or healthcare worker.

“It was important to us because we’re not in the business to make all the profit,” Garbee said. “It’s about [serving] the community and making sure the impact is there.”

But making face shields for kids comes with different considerations. PPE can be intimidating, restrictive, or just not fashionable. Garbee thought kids might be more interested in a fun-looking shield that still met industry standards.

“I’d wanted for quite some time to create a more user-friendly version of [face shields]. Early on, I reached out to Angela with Girls for a Change based on the relationship I have with her as friends. We’ve done projects together in the past,” Garbee said. “I thought it would be a really great opportunity to launch the first art shield, specifically with Angela and her program.”

Enter Hamilton Glass: artist and frequent collaborator with Girls for a Change. After working with Patton on several projects, including a mural in Jackson Ward, Glass was approached by Garbee to design a shield the girls would want to wear.

“The premise behind the design was making a crown out of flowers,” Glass said. “I’ve done a lot of work with Girls for a Change, and flowers are pretty much always a part of it.”

The mission at Girls for a Change has long been about growth and empowerment. The youth development organization was designed to help Black girls, and other girls of color, to see their goals and innovations come to life. Glass reflected on the symbolism, which he described as frequent, but unintentional.

“I was trying to find a way for the girls to make [the shields] cool, and expressions of themselves,” Glass said. “To bring out their personality through not just having a normal face shield.”

Glass finished a few designs for the shields before the final idea was chosen. It was revealed at the Girls for a Change garden party, where girls in the nonprofit’s summer programs gathered in a safe, socially-distant atmosphere. At the party, all the girls received a free shield, and could learn about production as well as try their hands at designing their own.

“I wanted the girls to see how they can take a creative skill and apply it — and have some kind of outlet for understanding small-batch manufacturing,” Garbee said. “I was thinking it would be a fun exercise, but it was almost more fun to see them creating their own shields.”

The need for PPE is not going away anytime soon. Garbee wants to support more nonprofits, and she has a plan to do it.

“We just got a printer that arrived this week. It will allow us to locally source our own printing, and do it in-house,” Garbee said. “If we do them locally, it means we don’t have to do 5000 at a time. We can do small batches — 100, 200, or 300 — that could be meaningful for small organizations that don’t have the budget to commit to thousands of these.”

While more partnerships may be coming in the future, Garbee expressed the importance of working with Patton and Glass for their first art shields.

“For me, it was important to specifically work with Angela. I was very excited that Hamilton was willing to work with us as a collaborator,” Garbee said. “We intend to create more of these, but to make our first splash through this partnership was really exciting.”

Their flower crown face shields are available on the GOOD WORK Society website. For every shield purchased, a donation will be made to Girls for a Change.

Goat’s Milk Soap Is The GOAT

David Tran | August 28, 2020

Topics: art, community, freckled farm soap company, goat soap roanoke va, local business, naked goat soap, richmond va farmers market, richmond va goat soap, roanoke, roanoke va farmers market, South of the James Farmers Market, virginia goat soap, wandering cow farm

Whether you want to incorporate more clean skin products into your life or just to live out your cottagecore fantasy, these homemade soap businesses from all around Virginia are here to add to your collection. And the best part: the soap comes from goats.

While you’re deep asleep in your bed at five in the morning, Crystal Neilson-Hall of Freckled Farm Soap Company is out feeding her herds of goats.

This is just the start of a long day for many goat farmers in Virginia. From tending their farms to formulating recipes, local goat farmers spend much of their time surrounded by the redolence of livestock, lavender, and cedarwood.

At Freckled Farm Soap Company in Goochland, Neilson-Hall and her husband may work until 10 or 11 at night. While her life constantly revolves around tending to her goats and other farm animals, Neilson-Hall says it doesn’t feel like work.

“I feel like I’m living my vacation, because I love what I do,” she said. The company is named after her two children, Breckin and Bryce; both names are Celtic words for “freckled.” She had always wanted goats, and the soap business grew out of her desire to raise them.

As environmentalists, Neilson-Hall and her husband stand behind the nutrition and environmental benefits of using goat’s milk. After doing their research, they decided to start creating products.

“So often, people are using products that put horrible chemicals into our water system,” Neilson-Hall said. “That messes up our reservoirs, creating algae, and killing and suffocating wildlife. So we’re very careful to pay attention to what we are creating.”

Their bar soaps consist of goat’s milk and essential oils, which they source from suppliers with Certified Sustainable Certificates, indicating that they utilize sustainable practices.

In addition to their goats and typical farm animals, Freckled Farm is bestowed with a guard llama, Afton, who is famous among many customers. Afton is reaching old age, but with the help of a guard dog, he is still committed to protecting the farm and animals.

“His job has always been to protect the herd,” Neilson-Hall said, “and he takes it pretty seriously.”

Naked Goat Soap, located right outside of Richmond in Hanover, was founded by Heather Long in 2014. The “Naked” in Naked Goat Soap refers to the lack of dyes and chemicals in her products, Long said.

Burnt out by her real estate career, Long decided to venture into the soap-making business after moving to her husband’s family farm and acquiring goats. From there, she delved into research on goat’s milk benefits and soap-making, and started experimenting with batches. She began selling to friends and family, and the business grew organically.

“It was just a flow, a natural process as this came together,” Long said. “It afforded me the opportunity to focus on my business and leave my previous career.”

GOAT Soap, based in Roanoke, was created by Bryce and Emily Gannon after a trip to their local farmer’s market nearly a decade ago. They purchased goat’s milk soaps from a vendor, and after one use, they never went back to any other soaps.

The two were so in love with the soaps that they soon talked with the vendor about expanding his brand nationwide. After learning the soap-making process directly from him — and with many trials and errors — GOAT Soap was born.

“It all started from a desire,” Emily said, “to take such a good product with goat’s milk in it to more than just the downtown Roanoke farmer’s market.”

The brand’s name is a pun, as GOAT is an acronym for The Greatest of All Time. The Gannons are confident about goat’s milk products when they say “it’s the greatest soap of all time.”

Homemade goat’s milk soap lacks artificial ingredients and chemicals that commercial mass-produced soaps often contain. The rich nutrients in goat’s milk, such as alpha hydroxy acid, combined with essential oils’ soothing properties, make the product a non-toxic and natural alternative that many consumers seek.

Both Neilson-Hall and Emily Gannon pointed out that mass-produced commercial soaps are not legally allowed to call their products “soaps,” but rather use terms like “beauty bars” or “moisturizing bars.”

“Many of them are qualified as detergents, not actually soaps,” Emily said. “In order to be a soap, you have to move through the saponification process.”

Saponification, in simpler terms, is a process in which triglycerides such as oils react with lye to produce soap.

“Once you go handmade, you can’t go back,” Neilson-Hall said. “They’re using high-quality ingredients, high-quality oils that are really nourishing.”

Owning a small goat’s milk soap business comes with multiple perks. Besides being surrounded by goats all day long, there is full creativity and control in designing and naming the products.

Many of Naked Goat Soap’s product names are influenced by their scent profiles and color. Take “Calm” as an example: a cool, gray bar soap. It’s named after the lavender essential oil’s ability to calm, and for Long, gray is a calming color.

“I think people are connected to a scent,” Long said. “Maybe it reminds them of their childhood or it reminds them of a certain place.”

Neilson-Hall and her husband have a similar approach to naming their soaps. While they do take into consideration the ingredients and scent profile, extensive research goes into the naming process as well.

They were conflicted on what to name a bar soap containing frankincense and myrrh. Neilson-Hall said she wanted to avoid simply naming it “Frankincense and Myrrh,” because it can have religious connotations. After learning these essential oils originated in the Northeast region of Africa, and that Cleopatra used them in her makeup to prevent conjunctivitis, she decided on the name “Cleopatra.”

“We felt it would be a good homage,” Neilson-Hall said. “This woman, who is known for her beauty and her skincare; to honor her [because] these essential oils hail from her part of the world.”

Wandering Cow Farm in Charles City, named for owner Mary Murphy’s infamous cow that frequently escaped the farm, started out as a forage project for her kids. She soon turned to soap-making as a way to help treat her daughter’s psoriasis and acne.

Like many local businesses, Murphy’s business took a hit amid the coronavirus outbreak. As a response to the pandemic, she began making face masks and hand sanitizers. Murphy went through all the steps to get federal and ABC permits, so she’s able to buy alcohol from manufacturers, pharmaceutical companies, and distilleries. For Murphy, helping people find these essential products during coronavirus was an important contribution to the local community.

GOAT Soap also felt the effects of coronavirus this year. Launched in March, right as the pandemic started creeping into the United States, Emily Gannon said the extra time at home was helpful. It ensured that their products and website were ready before launching, and it was also beneficial to customers.

“It has helped that people have had a chance to slow down,” she said, “and evaluate the products they use in their life.”

For Neilson-Hall and Long, there were some challenges in operating during the pandemic. A majority of their income came from farmer’s markets and exhibitions. With cases spiking in Virginia in past weeks, these events were cancelled.

The reopening of the South of the James Farmers Market allowed Neilson-Hall and her husband to experiment with selling their product under social distancing guidelines, but they barely made a profit.

“The little bit that we were bringing in was not worth the risk it was bringing into our family, with my high-risk husband,” she said.

In an average year, Long would attend 20 to 24 shows, one as far as Nashville, she said. This year, while some shows transitioned online, Long said the virtual markets do not offer the same intimate experiences and interactions as in-person markets.

Despite the obstacles that the coronavirus has created for these local businesses, website traffic has surged during the past couple months.

Long is thankful for her customers’ loyalty and the brand’s stockists — like Ashby, Whole Foods, Mamie’s Apothecary, and more — for their continuous support for her business. She also acknowledged the amount of free time she now has to develop her brand further.

“It allowed me to step back for a second,” Long said, “and to take time to start working on new products, like our liquid soaps. [It also helps] to hone in on the things that maybe you’d miss on a day-to-day normal year.”

The pandemic has forced many local vendors to restructure their business models, and these goat’s milk soap companies are no exceptions.

“Luckily, we have amazing, supportive customers who have followed us to this new platform and continued to support us,” Neilson-Hall said.

Soaps from Freckled Farm Soap Company, Naked Goat Soap, GOAT Soap, and Wandering Cow Farm are available on their websites, along with other products.

Painting The Streets Of Jackson Ward

Brooke Nicholson | August 18, 2020

Topics: art, Art 180, arts district richmond va, big secret, bloomberg art initiative, city of richmond art, community, Gallery5, jackson ward mural, jackson ward richmond va, maggie walker memorial plaza, maggie walker richmond va, richmond va art, richmond va murals, Venture Richmond

Where West Marshall meets Brook Road, a new pedestrian plaza is coming — and with local organizations like Gallery5, Venture Richmond, Big Secret, and more behind it, it’s set to brighten up the intersection through art.

The already-colorful City of Richmond is about to get another rainbow upgrade, thanks to a grant from the Bloomberg Philanthropies Asphalt Art Initiative. After 200 cities applied for the grant, one of the sixteen $25,000 grants was jointly awarded to both Venture Richmond and City of Richmond Public Art Commission. The grant supports cities that use art to improve community safety, and creates further public engagement.

PHOTO: *Site plan for the upcoming project funded by Bloomberg’s Asphalt Art Initiative in Richmond, via Venture Richmond*.

Richmond’s newest project will include the intersection of West Marshall Street and Brook Road in the Arts District/Jackson Ward neighborhood. The grant will help fund a new pedestrian plaza, a parklet, and an intersection mural. The list of partners on the project is still growing, but so far includes the City of Richmond, Gallery5, Venture Richmond, Big Secret, ART 180, Vanderbilt Properties, and Walter Parks Architects. ART 180 is in charge of coordinating the public art components of the project, and Walter Parks Architects is responsible for providing in-kind design services.

“Collectively, these elements build upon the momentum of the neighborhood as the nexus of the Arts District, and enhance the route into Jackson Ward anchored by the Maggie Lena Walker Memorial Plaza a block away,” said Susan Glasser, Public Art Coordinator for the City of Richmond. “On a practical level, the project aspires to increase pedestrian traffic by enhancing safety and street life, to create a revitalized and beautified environment in an underutilized public space, and to promote civic engagement in the neighborhood.”

Venture Richmond is also donating $5,000 to the project that will come from the organization’s event Park(ing) Day design/build competition, hosted last September. Venture Richmond’s overall mission is to ensure that the City of Richmond focuses on enhanced vitality of Richmond, the downtown area, and Riverfront, along with enhancing property management services. Together with the city’s Public Art Commission, which invests in local artists to improve economic and cultural identity growth, the organization hopes to create a new destination from an existing intersection. It will not only brighten the busy section, but enhance its functionality.

*PHOTO: Butterfly mural in Asheville, NC, by Sound Mind Creative. Photo by Justin Mitchell.*

“It’s really exciting to see a lot of hard work by the community rewarded by a grant from Bloomberg Philanthropies, to make changes to that intersection that make it safer and more attractive to the residents and businesses in the area,” said Max Hepp-Buchanan, Director of Riverfront and Downtown Placemaking for Venture Richmond. “In the age of Covid-19, it’s more important than ever that we design public spaces like this for people to safely gather and make social connections.”

Bloomberg Philanthropies’ main initiative is to invest in cities around the world, ensuring that there is a good focus on the arts, education, public health, and government innovation among other areas. In 2019, Michael R. Bloomberg’s Bloomberg Philanthropies — which includes all of his giving along with personal philanthropy, foundation, and Bloomberg Associates — donated $3.3 billion.

The City of Richmond is eager to hear what the public and Richmond locals want out of this project, and have made a survey for volunteers to record their opinions. The City hopes to start off its public engagement process with a bang, ensuring that the voices of locals are heard, and that the project will not impinge too much on the lives of those living around the intersection. Community members are highly encouraged to take the survey, if possible, so city officials can gather as much information as possible for a swift, smooth project timeline.

*PHOTO: Underground at Ink Block in Boston, MA. Mural by Silvia López Chavez. Photo by @Rediovision.*

Richmond’s newest project of the three conceptual elements hopes to further engage the community in local art, and will create a more functional intersection within the popular public intersection.

To learn more about the initiative and follow updates, visit Venture Richmond’s website and take the community survey.

Who’s That Artist On Billboards Around Richmond?

Brooke Nicholson | August 3, 2020

Topics: artist billboard hull street, artist billboard jeff davis highway, community, covid 19 richmond va, hip hop artists richmond va, hip hop richmond va, lamont henry, music, richmond va artists, richmond va billboards, RVA, rva music, stack a mill entertainment, yung paper

Brothers Yung Paper and Lamont Henry have taken a creative approach to advertising Stack A Mill Entertainment… but unlike others, this entertainment company exists to give back to the local community.

If we ever want to get back to a normal routine, it’s important for everyone to pitch in and do their part to stop the spread of COVID-19. It’s been repeated a thousand times — but what if someone did more than just wear their mask to the store, staying home all day, and simultaneously doing what they loved? What if the music community could inspire others to propose a change toward equality? What if they could locate and deliver the supplies to prevent COVID-19? That’s what Stack A Mill Entertainment are trying to do.

Richmond rapper Yung Paper started making music in his senior year of high school, almost ten years ago. Now, he and his brother Lamont Henry have teamed up to create an independent record label called Stack A Mill Entertainment. S.A.M.E. allows the duo to produce their own music, and they’re using the platform to do more in their community. So far, Yung Paper has released several singles with the label.

“Everybody’s got something they love to do, and for a long time, I was in search of what that thing was. I finally found it in music,” Yung Paper said. “Years ago, we started a label, and it’s doing music locally — trying to brand ourselves to a bigger level.”

His brother echoes the sentiment. “This is something we are both passionate about. I felt like it would be a great foundation to do bigger things, especially for our community,” Henry said.

From the birth of his music career in high school to today, Yung Paper has worked with a wide variety of styles. “We really try to be on both sides of the fence with music, and it’s not just hip hop and R&B,” Yung Paper said. “We love all types of music. There’s no limit to what we’ve made, and what we can make in the future.”

With a growing platform and a newfound independent record label, an opportunity came to get creative with the business. The duo started seeking out new ways to advertise their brand-new career.

“We have billboards on Hull Street and one on Jefferson Davis, right in front of the Old Tobacco Company,” Henry said. With giant billboards hosting Yung Paper’s face to busy streets in Richmond, the feedback has been nothing but positive. “The reactions have been all love,” Henry said. “We’re just regular people, but it’s all love, and it’s getting taken seriously. So it’s been pretty cool.”

Once the billboards were up, Yung Paper started hearing from the community regarding S.A.M.E.

“People contacted me through social media, saying how proud they were when they saw [the billboard],” he said. “I love to see support like that. As an artist, it’s inspiring to keep going. It’s like seeing yourself on TV; you get inspired to work harder, so you can continue to progress and do more things.”

“It doesn’t just bring me and Yung Paper joy,” Henry added. “It also brings joy to people less fortunate than us, whether they know us or whatever the case may be. When somebody sees it, that’s less of a privilege, and more of a thought like ‘Dang, I went to school with him,’ or ‘We grew up in the same neighborhood.’ If he can do it, what can I do, you know what I’m saying?”

While the entire world roughs it out during coronavirus, Yung Paper released a single, appropriately titled “Pandemic,” which speaks to the current economic and global climate. Recording a song during the outbreak has been fairly easy for most artists — but filming a music video during the pandemic, about the pandemic? That’s a different story.

“We captured some of the scenes at the Robert E. Lee Monument, that was pretty dope,” Henry said. “The only challenge about that scene was trying to keep social distancing [while people come] from all over the world to see the statue. Inbetween times of the shoot, we might have to stop because people walk by, but all in all it was really fun.”

“We try to capture a part of history,” Yung Paper said. “Especially to capture the statues with everything going on now. That was awesome.”

Making music isn’t the only thing on the S.A.M.E. brothers’ minds. To them, creating an entertainment company and representing the Richmond scene means serving the community in any way they could, with any free time they had left. Yung Paper and Henry’s latest act of community service includes handing out free masks, hand sanitizers, gloves, and more.

“We try to get out on Wednesdays and Fridays, helping out with meal donations when we’re not handing out gloves, hand sanitizers, and masks with our team,” Henry said. “We always go to the local businesses, small businesses, private businesses. We’re always handing out [supplies] to them.”

For the brothers, it’s a labor of love. Yung Paper and Henry are consistently seeking out new ways to give back to their community.

“If we see somebody less fortunate than us, it makes us sit back [to be] thankful for what we have,” said Henry. “A lot of people don’t have the small necessary things, like hand sanitizer. When we do positive things to put a smile on their face, the satisfaction when that person walks off with their mask or gloves — it’s little, but it’s a big thing to us.”

Along with donating essential items to slow the spread of the COVID-19, Henry and Yung Paper have teamed up with other local organizations. Working with radio stations, small businesses, and charitable organizations (like Radio One, 92 KISS FM, and Human Food RVA), they’ve helped give out over 600 meals, essential items, hygiene products, and even helped pay for less fortunate families’ bills.

“We fundraised over $5,000 to send a kid to Old Dominion University,” Henry said. “We held a seminar for kids at a local barber shop, because we wanted to hear from the youth. ‘How do you feel about what’s going on?’ What do they feel they need to change? Change starts with yourself before you can try to change anything else.”

With a strong head start producing singles, advertising in the biggest way possible, and serving their local Richmond community one mask at a time, the future is looking bright for Henry and Yung Paper. And they’re not slowing down anytime soon.

“At the end of the day, we try to take it as far as we can go,” said Yung Paper. “That way, we can turn around and give it back to our community, and put other people in a better position than they’re in right now. Lead by example. It’s very rewarding to see that.”

To catch up with the brothers behind S.A.M.E., find them on Facebook and Instagram… or on your local billboard overlooking the city.