Office of Institutional Equity, Effectiveness and Success

Office of Institutional Equity, Effectiveness and Success

Camp Qmunity

Come back in April 2023 for information regarding the 2023 Camp Qmunity Program!

Camp Q for 2022: Queer Interventions: Space and Place Making

Image with details on Camp Qmunity 2022: Space and Place Making

Join VCU’s Queer Research and Advocacy Center (known as the Q Collective) for a summer intensive on LGBT+/Queer Studies.

Throughout July 2022, Camp Qmunity participants met synchronously and asynchronously to talk about space. Topics ranged from asking “what does queer space look like?”, “how do we queer space?”, and playing with space/place making as a group. Featured guest speakers included artists, designers and writers who question place and think about what “queering” means as an action. Through their time together, participants interrogated the space of VCU in both digital and physical forms to imagine a queerer place. Students studied and engaged with mentors and scholars from throughout the VCU community and outside of it. This interdisciplinary intensive culminated in a group project that made graphic interventions into existing VCU digital space.

Camp Qmunity 2022 was co-directed by nicole killian, Associate Professor and director of Graduate Studies in Graphic Design and Archana A. Pathak, interim director of the Q Collective.

A $500 stipend was paid to each participant upon successful completion of the program.

Responsibilities included:

  1. Completing pre-work requirements (readings, videos, written assignments)
  2. Attending/viewing all workshops over the four-week period
  3. Attending project work sessions once a week (in addition to workshops). Some of these sessions will be in-person, with dates/times to be determined collectively by the co-directors and participants
  4. Completing any individual assignments throughout the four week period
  5. Completing creating a collective sticker set that could “cover” the VCU campus and website

The competitive paid opportunity was open to all students with at least one more semester of full-time undergraduate coursework. Completion of the program earned students a Foundational level digital badge; details available here. 

Pell eligible, first-generation, and students who hold multiple marginalized identities were particularly encouraged to apply.

Please email qcollective@vcu.edu if you have any additional questions.