Richmond Has Heart
Now more than ever we know that Richmond has heart.
The City of Richmond has unveiled a campaign aimed at bringing the community, residents and businesses together to show their support for those working to fight the COVID-19 pandemic and to explore new and meaningful ways to find connection while maintaining physical distancing protocols.
We're asking the residents of Richmond to share uplifting news, cheer on our front line and essential workers, get creative in staying connected but apart, and gather the good news using the hashtag #RichmondHasHeart.
We'll be sharing stories, videos, artwork and photos on our social media channels in the coming days and weeks ahead.
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- Bang pots and pans, make some noise and cheer on front line and essential workers from the safety of your window, balcony or front step every night at 7pm
- Post a message or heart in your window as a sign of encouragement for your neighbours, front line workers and community
- Share a message of appreciation for frontline workers on your social media
- If you see something shareable in your neighbourhood, snap a photo and share
- DIY, we'd love to see your creative mind at work and how you show that #RichmondHasHeart
- Use the hashtag #RichmondHasHeart
- Tag @funRichmond on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter
How you can get started
Here are some downloadable graphics to get you started! Print, colour and share!
#RichmondHasHeart Colouring Sheet
#RichmondHasHeart Full Colour
Public Art Projects
In response to the COVID-19 crisis and as part of the Richmond Has Heart campaign, Richmond’s Public Art Program is launching a series of artist-initiated projects that explore new and meaningful ways to find community connection while maintaining physical distancing protocols. Four art projects by Richmond-based artists will be presented from June until September.
Through funding via developer contributions to the Community Public Art Program, these projects will promote mental health, well-being and creativity while fostering community connections during this unprecedented, destabilizing and challenging time.
Murmurations: A Score for Social Distancing
Lou Sheppard
Additional Project Information & Updates
Murmurations: A Score for Social Distancing is a choreographic notation for seven dancers. Based on the movements of birds flying in a flock, the choreography invites the dancers to perform an interconnected set of movements while never coming within two metres of each other. The work will be installed on the parking lot in front of Lansdowne Mall and will reference the social distancing directions that we now see in public spaces. Murmurations will invite visitors to follow the directional markings on the pavement, like an interconnected hopscotch, and perform the dance.
Lou Sheppard is an interdisciplinary artist from K'jipuktuk/Halifax. They have exhibited in Canada and internationally, notably in the Toronto Biennial, in the Antarctic Biennale and the Antarctic Pavilion in Venice. Sheppard received the Emerging Atlantic Artist Award in 2017, and was longlisted for the Sobey Art Award in 2018 and 2020. Their work often leads them to collaborate with communities and with musicians, visual artists and performing artists. They are the current Branscombe House Artist-in-Residence in Richmond, BC.
Dearest
Keely O'Brien
Additional Project Information & Updates
Dearest is a community art project which encourages connection, interpersonal exchange and safe methods of social contact through the lens of creative snail mail. Participants will sign up online to receive a pack of three artist designed, pre-stamped blank postcards in the mail, that they can fill out with messages of love and encouragement and mail on to friends and loved ones. This project responds to and considers the experience of loneliness, grief and isolation which so many of us are currently experiencing. In a circumstance where we are all looking for new and innovative ways to express our love and care for our community, snail mail offers a playful and reassuringly tangible opportunity. In this way, the intentions of sharing creativity and generosity will ripple gently outwards into the larger community with each original participant acting as a link to even more postcard recipients.
Keely O’Brien is an interdisciplinary artist based in Richmond, whose practice incorporates intricately handmade objects with immersive, innovative theatre creation. Deeply site-responsive and engaged with questions of place, home and belonging, Keely’s work aims to celebrate the potential for creativity and community in the place and people around her.
Eating in the time of COVID-19
Christy Fond and Denise Fong
Additional Project Information & Updates
How has your relationship with food changed since the pandemic? Eating in the Time of COVID-19 will be an online exhibition that will capture culturally diverse and intergenerational experiences with food during the coronavirus pandemic.
Local residents, Christy Fong and Denise Fong have been exploring the use of digital media since 2015 as an approach to community storytelling. In 2016, the pair co-directed the documentary short Under Fire: Inside a Chinese Roasted Meats Shop in Vancouver. The film was nominated for BCSA: Vancouver Asian Film Festival’s Best Canadian Short Award in 2016.
Loving: Memories
Marina Szijarto
Additional Project Information & Updates
Loving: Memories is a community engagement project to honour those we have lost. Following easy, illustrated instructions and design guidelines, Richmond residents are invited to create secular memorial shrines in memory of loved ones or to honour someone special in the community (or elsewhere.) Displayed in household windows, the shrines will be illuminated by electric candles; thus, within neighbourhoods and through these beacons of light, we will express our own and witness each other’s mourning and humanity, connected through the honouring of those we have lost during these unprecedented times.
Marina Szijarto is a Richmond-based professional artist with more than 25 years of experience in diverse contemporary arts practices including community-engaged arts, theatre and festival design, installation arts and shrines. Much of her work is site-specific, created for, and with, a particular landscape, community or season. She is an Artist-in-Residence at Mountain View Cemetery in Vancouver and has been involved with leading community art projects for the Richmond Maritime Festival and The Harvest Full Moon Project at City Centre Community Centre. In 2018, she received a Richmond Arts Award for Cultural Leadership.
