40th Anniversary
The Action Alliance celebrated our 40th anniversary in 2021! For that, we put together a multi-pronged project centered on stories—collecting them, sharing them, and keeping them. Components of our 40th project included an interactive digital timeline, an audio podcast, an oral history booklet featuring the voices of forty movement makers, and a poster featuring forty milestones in the movement.
To view our interactive digital timeline featuring photos, documents, text-based stories, videos, and more from the last forty years of the movement to end sexual and domestic violence in Virginia, click the button below.
40 Years of the Action Alliance
In celebration of our 40th anniversary, we’ve put together an oral history of the movement to end sexual and domestic violence in Virginia.
The booklet and podcast linked below are the results of many interviews and conversations with movement leaders, Action Alliance staff (both past and present), allies in the work, and other folks who have been central to moving Virginia toward a violence-free future.
We recognize that this history is not exhaustive and that there are as many movement stories as there are participants in that movement. For that reason, we hope that this history-keeping will be ongoing and that these projects mark not a completion, but a beginning.
About Our 40th Design Elements
As we began planning the celebration of our 40th anniversary, we wanted to create a visual theme for the campaign that would be emblematic of the history of our coalition’s work, tie the various pieces of the campaign together, and motivate our community of advocates, donors, survivors, and partners to be aware of and celebrate this momentous occasion with us!
Because our coalition is made up of many different organizations and people from disparate localities and regions with many different identities and histories, we chose the theme “Many Stories, One Movement,” visually represented by a quilt motif. When all our various histories are woven together, they create one history — the way quilt pieces come together to form one beautiful object. This visual is also evocative of one of the roots of our movement: people coming together in quilting circles and using that space to build collective power. It’s about various pieces coming together to make something beautiful, in coalition.
The red color palette and imagery of the ruby symbolize the fact that this is our 40th — the “ruby anniversary.”
We hope that this campaign has prompted you to feel:
- Connected to a history and a developing story, a lineage, and a movement;
- Inspired to be part of this history,
- Curious about the history of the Action Alliance and the stories that are woven together to create that history.