Mayor Levar Stoney, pictured with students Ta’Dreama McBride and Clyde Walker, announced plans for a mural and augmented reality installation at City Hall Tuesday. (Photo by Meredith Moran)
Two 160-foot-tall banners featuring local youth activists will be displayed on the exterior of Richmond City Hall as part of an augmented reality art installation starting July 1, Mayor Stoney announced Tuesday at a press conference.
The installation will feature Ta’Dreama McBride and Clyde Walker, members of Rise for Youth, a Richmond organization whose aim is to “dismantle the youth prison model,” according to its website.
By holding a smartphone up to the banners, people can see animations of McBride and Walker’s dreams for the future and hear other Richmond youth reciting a poem about a world without youth prisons.
The city of Richmond partnered with Performing Statistics, an organization that uses art to advocate for alternatives to youth incarceration, to create the installation. Performing Statistics Creative Director Mark Strandquist spoke at the press conference.
“These are exactly the kinds of monumental art projects Richmond needs now,” he said, “not ones that focus on the singular voice, but on the multitude of young folks fighting to create this future.”
McBride says the art project has been in the works since last summer.
“To be on this building and to be able to express myself on this huge platform is just extraordinary,” she says. “It warms my heart to think that people will probably be very impacted by seeing this, and I just hope that they’ll be inspired to do something to make a change.”
The banners, which will be on display for six months, are just the beginning, according to Reggie Gordon, the city’s deputy chief administrative officer.
“Over the next three years, our plan is to present other faces and voices of Richmond residents that hopefully represent a wide array of people, from older adults to persons with sensory and physical disabilities to immigrants,” he says. “We are all one Richmond, but today, we are our youth.
“Richmond’s youth provide a key voice in our conversation on building a more compassionate city, and I greatly look forward to other conversations this monumental public art project installation will inspire.”