"Richmond Mural Project" by Micah Hunter

Last school year in Focused Inquiry, I was tasked with creating a multimodal project that would cover one of our local cities -- Richmond or RVA. This sounds a bit strange, but the project was based around China Miéville’s novel, The City & the City, in which two separate cities exist within the same city, both willingly oblivious to the other. Like the fictional cities in the novel, Richmond is also made up of two separate cities. These cities are known as Richmond and RVA with Richmond being a Civil War historical site, and RVA being the young core of the city, desperate to ease tourists’ and residents’ tense relations with Richmond’s past.  

In my multimodal project, I chose to depict RVA through the Richmond Mural Project. I made this choice because I felt that the younger and hipper RVA mostly existed around the VCU campus, which is also where many of the murals of the Richmond Mural Project are located. Furthermore, I think that these murals reflect the look and feel that the RVA brand is going for in their bright colors, unique art styles, and their generally energetic but rebellious aesthetic.