Silicon Valley may be known as the country’s epicenter for technology and innovation, but there is plenty of ingenuity brewing right here in RVA. For this issue’s cover story (Page 86), we took a closer look at a group of nonprofits, business incubators and educational initiatives at local universities that foster innovation and creativity.
You may be surprised by the breadth of what we found — whether you’re a food entrepreneur, an aspiring coder, an artist or part of a tech startup, there’s an entity out there that can offer the advice, knowledge, equipment and, in some cases, the funding to help bring your ideas to fruition.
There’s no shortage of creative capital in the River City, and it’s wonderful to know there are resources available to help get great ideas off the ground. As Erin Powell, executive director of Lighthouse Labs, a nonprofit seed-stage accelerator for small businesses, says, “Entrepreneurship can be really daunting. There’s a lot of risk and uncertainty.”
One entrepreneur who knows this firsthand is Mimi Regelson, former owner of the legendary Grace Street shop Exile, which closed its doors in 2011. In this issue Harry Kollatz Jr. explores the history and legacy of the store. Though Regelson admits Exile was never really a successful business model financially, for a certain generation of Richmonders, especially Virginia Commonwealth University students from the mid-’80s through the early 2000s, it was a counterculture mecca.
I remember, in the late 1990s, venturing to Grace Street every now and then with co-workers during our lunch hour to check out the original World of Mirth, which was then housed upstairs at Exile. This was in the days before online shopping, when browsing was still fun, and a trip to Exile could reveal a quirky, one-of-a-kind treasure.
If you’ve ever had the same experience, or remember the old Grace Street before VCU expanded, you will enjoy this walk down memory lane. I can’t help but wonder how Exile would be doing today, with ’80s and ’90s trends such as Doc Martens experiencing a revival.
This month, we also continue our coverage of education during the pandemic, as Leah Small looks at how school divisions, parents and education advocates are working to serve special-needs students (Page 34) and writer Stephanie Ganz shares how her family decided to opt out of virtual schooling for her third-grade daughter and instead try “unschooling” (Page 30) — a way of learning from real-life experiences by following a child’s interests rather than teaching to a prescribed, one-size-fits-all curriculum. Unschooling requires a lot of parental involvement (which Ganz acknowledges she is privileged to take on) and relies on a lot of creativity.
During this weird year, it seems as good an approach to learning as any. One lesson 2020 has taught us all is that it takes creativity and ingenuity to survive a pandemic. These are qualities worth investing in — our survival may depend on it.
