Altars Festival RVA 2022

Join us October 30, 2022 12 pm – 5 pm for the opening of the Altars Festival RVA 2022.

This festival is a cross-cultural ancestor remembrance celebration inspired by Dia de los Muertos and many other ancestor remembrance celebrations from around the world.

Cultures worldwide have numerous ancestor remembrance traditions, but America does not, particularly because American ethnocide does not want people of color to collectively gather, remember their past, and retell their stories. Ethnocide is the destruction of culture while keeping the people, and the Altars Festival counters ethnocide by empowering people to remember, sustain, and celebrate their culture, while also providing a safe communal space for coping with the generational trauma and loss brought on by American ethnocide. We combat ethnocide through acts of cultural remembrance, activating ancestral knowledge, and creating new traditions that are relevant to our lived experiences.

The Altars Festival RVA 2022 is a collaboration of The Sustainable Culture Lab and Philanthropy Journal. This year The Sustainable Culture Lab and Philanthropy Journal have asked multiple local RVA artists through Art Works to create altars with the aim that the greater RVA community will see these examples, and become inspired to engage in their own, culturally relevant acts of remembrance.

Additionally, The Sustainable Culture Lab founder Barrett Holmes Pitner will be in attendance as a guest from Washington, DC and will be available to sign copies of his book The Crime Without a Name: Ethnocide and the Erasure of Culture in America.

Enjoy music by Richmond musicians. The event is free and open to the public.