Click on the images below to see what’s up in the gardens and to see our archive of previous events.
Please continue scrolling if you are an artist or community member interested in hosting an event or collaborating on programming at Visible Records.
Are you an artist or community member interested in hosting an event or collaborating on programming at Visible Records (VR)?
Please read below for some things to consider.
VR is very new, and we are still developing decision making models that reflect our values. We are a small staff of three, currently Morgan Ashcom, Mahanoor Samee, and Emmy Thacker. Morgan manages the entire property at 1740 Broadway St and is co-founder of Visible Records.
We are experimenting with a relational approach to decision making about programming in our community space. We are guided by the criteria below (see list of questions we ask ourselves) when making those decisions. Our local and relational model grew naturally here by responding to interests expressed by a diverse group of people that we are around everyday.
Visible Records has a large Common Area that community members and artists share for events and personal work. F12 Infoshop also occupies this space. The Common Area is separate from our Gallery Space. Decisions about gallery programming are made by members of our exhibitions curatorial group: Neal Rock, Kate Fowler, Federico Cuatlacuatl and Morgan Ashcom.
After reading what we’ve written below, here’s how you can contact us:
Email: studio@visible-records.com
Instagram: @visible_records
Facebook: facebook.com/visiblerecords
A few examples of community programming at Visible Records:
Visible Records is located within a larger warehouse at 1740 Broadway St in Charlottesville. A few doors down, there are recording studios and musicians within the same building. They expressed an interest in using Visible Records as a venue to showcase artists they work with, so we started making our space regularly available to them.
VR also hosts a Visiting Artist Residency. We often get recommendations for future visiting artists from previous artists in residence, artists who exhibit in our gallery, artists who are studio members, and members of our exhibitions curatorial group.
Other community run cultural programming we’ve hosted includes memorial services, birthday parties, fundraisers, reading groups, community organizing and artist brunches. If we turn down a proposal, it is either because we’ve run into scheduling issues or it does not meet some of the criteria articulated below. Thank you for reading and we look forward to building with you. Please reach out with any questions or clarifications.
Questions we ask ourselves:
Is there a diverse group of community members involved in the development and facilitation of the proposed programming?
Will the proposed programming serve or be accessible to a diverse community?
Are there other venues in town that are better suited and available to the programming being proposed?
Does the timing of the proposed programming conflict with our community in any way?
Do we have the capacity to support this event or are we (as staff) feeling overwhelmed?
Who we’ve worked with:
Black & Indigenous Feminist Futures Institute
Rasquache Mobile Cinema
Blue Ridge Abortion Fund & Oshun’s Hands Doula Collective
Defund Cville PD & Cville Community Cares, Visions of Liberation Free Store
The Bridge Progressive Arts Initiative
University of Virginia Students & Faculty
What’s Guiding Us:
Tema Okun’s White Supremacy Culture
Strike Moma’s Framework and Terms for Struggle
David Graeber’s The Utopia of Rules
Peter Linebaugh & Marcus Rediker’s The Many-Headed Hydra
adrienne maree brown’s Emergent Strategy
No one is pure in a colonized world. We all live by our contradictions and look forward to growing and working with people who are committed to operationalizing their privileges towards dismantling systems of oppression.