VALIDATION DAY
Validation Day is our ongoing, annual celebration of boundless love and universal acceptance, in collaboration with All the Saints Theater Company. Each year we distribute dozens of handwritten love notes anonymously and gratuitously to anyone and everyone we encounter.
2024 We collaborated with art teacher Anne Chamblin and students at Patrick Henry School of Science and the Arts on a parade and performance inspired by the Chinese Myth of the Dragon Gate.
2023 We returned to the streets with a parade and performance dedicated to heartbreak and healing. Afterwards, we burned hundreds of prints that participants had imbued with their own secret heartbreaks and scattered the ashes in the river.
2022 We teamed up with Fonticello Food Forest on Richmond’s Southside and distributed hand-printed, and hand-written love notes at their weekly Free Food Distribution!
2021 Validation Day went virtual during COVID, and we shared handwritten love and affirmation through instagram.
2020 We marched from Monroe Park to the ICA, where we performed a canta storia for our assembled guests.
2019 We launched Validation Day as part of our exhibition These Are My Friends and they Remain With Me Forever at Gallery5.
Rationale
On Valentine’s Day in elementary school, everyone gave Valentines to everyone else. There is a way in which we acknowledge the humanity of children and their emotional vulnerability, but do not extend the same humanity to ourselves.
Twin Oaks Community, in Louisa Virginia, has renamed this holiday Validation Day. In their re-design of the holiday, everyone receives a card reflecting gratitude and validation for their unique contribution to the community. Inspired by their example, we devised our own creative redesign of Valentine’s Day.
