Spring 2021
Connecting Remotely
For ten years, we had been working with our students to explore the city of Richmond and connect with community members. Our culminating events, such as performances and museum exhibition openings, brought together people from many walks of life in the same space to have conversations that were sometimes celebratory but also challenging. In the spring of 2021, none of this seemed possible.
Teaching a community-engaged course on Zoom in the Spring of 2021, at the height of the pandemic, forced us to change many of our practices. Since 2018, we have been focused on HIV in Richmond, producing two docudramas and creating a Valentine Museum exhibition in collaboration with our community partners. Both live theater and museum exhibitions were not viable choices this semester. Instead we embarked on a digital exhibition project focused on the impact of COVID on people affected by HIV. Alex Fulton, the designer of this website, brilliantly spearheaded this project. While we could come up with a technological solution to exhibition design, our bigger concern was how we could help students build meaningful relationships with community partners they would only meet remotely. Our solution was to have our students connect with their community partners through a semester-long journaling project. Members of the St. Paul’s Baptist Church support group for those affected by HIV, our collaborators on two previous HIV-focused projects, became our students’ journaling partners.
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Photography by Tania del Carmen Fernández
Project Details
“The harmony that we find and create in one another is what creates safety. It starts from within but that communal harmony creates a lasting safety.”
Lindsay Bryant
01
Journal Making
Book artist Jen Thomas conducted a Zoom workshop on how to stitch 84-page journals. Each student created two journals—one for themself and one for their community partner. Jen put together packages of art supplies for our partners, and HIV advocate Lindsay Bryant delivered them to participants. These hand-made journals became repositories for deeply personal stories: some were comprised mainly of photos and artwork, and others were text-heavy and included pages of reflections on COVID and on living with HIV.
02
Community Partners
After meeting once on Zoom in order to get acquainted with their partners, an event documented by photographer Tania del Carmen Fernández, each student began checking in with their partner weekly to share their latest journal entries and work in their journals together. Their conversations ranged far and wide—the pairs talked about books and music they loved, showed off their pets to one another, and even sang and danced together online.
03
Oral Histories
After seven weeks of these weekly sessions, students and partners met together as a group. Students designed the questions they most wanted to ask the group, as well as the shape the event would take, from initial check-in to final Zoom dance-off: The virtual oral history session that ensued took the form of a conversation rather than a more formal interview.
On March 16, 2021, after seven weeks of these weekly sessions, students and partners met together as a group.
04
Digital Exhibition
Under Alex Fulton’s guidance, students started exploring how to think visually in a virtual space. Their biggest challenge was telling the story of their relationships with their partners in a digital format. They learned how to use Photoshop and Ilustrator in order to make digital portraits of their partners, collages, and the exhibition itself, which they titled “Remote Resilience.” View the Digital Exhibition
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A few words from Alex Fulton
The fact that the classes couldn’t meet in person didn’t remove the genuine care and connection that the students and partners developed over the course of the semester. When creating works that reflected these moments and conversation, the students had incredible attention to the personal details. This really gave others a glimpse into—and understanding of—the lives of their partners, as well as their own.
05
Getting Together
After a semester of meeting only remotely, students and partners got together for a picnic in a park. Each student presented their partner with a thank-you letter as well as the framed portrait they had created. Finally, students and partners had a chance to get to know one another in person, an occasion documented by Tania del Carmen Fernández.
