Building Community in post COVID-19 Raleigh

During the Phase One stay-at-home order in North Carolina, many local businesses were impacted including our studio, Two Dots. We felt stuck, uncomfortable, and uncertain about what was to come. Impacted by the overwhelming fear of uncertainty, I decided to invite my LinkedIn community to share their voice and what they miss about their favorite spots in Raleigh.

We invited the community to share their voice and send us a little note of encouragement of things they miss about their favorite local business. We then went to film each of those businesses to produce a video that created visibility for both the community and small businesses.

Submissions from the community flooded our inbox and we got a tremendous response from the people of Raleigh. We made this in the hopes it will help us connect the voice of the community with each local business and create a wave of encouragement, communications and help increase the decisions to spend locally. This movement is to help keep our money local and to support the Small Medium businesses in our community. Our goal is to repeat this project in other neighboring cities to help boost the local economy.

The project made the team and I feel a sense of purpose again and deepened our connection with the community.

A few days before releasing the video, the news of George Floyd's death swept the globe. Witnessing the global uprise on social media, and walking alongside other community members in peaceful protests, I truly understood the importance and necessity of our voice being heard.

The #RCityRVoice initiative spiraled into a much larger campaign that is made possible by amazing creatives from the area, who volunteered their time to build this platform. As we continue to discover the importance of capturing people's stories, feeling acknowledged, feeling seen, feeling heard, and accepted, we welcome you to a larger project with the goal of providing a space for honest and open conversation.