At the start of each summer, outdoor sports enthusiasts and athletes gather in RVA to fight for the championship title in everything from Slackline to Speed Bouldering, Endurance Paddleboarding, Mountainbiking, and more. This weekend festival, sponsored by Dominion, is a mecca for lovers of nature and everything outdoors. Kind of ironic that Dominion, Virginia’s top climate polluter, sponsors an event celebrating the outdoors while they’re simultaneously destryong the planet, don’t you think?
We thought so too. So this weekend at Riverrock, a group of climate activists took to the streets of Riverrock to get that message our to athletes, spectators, and Dominion itself. Our strategy? Photobombing Dominion’s Instagram contest.
During Riverrock, Dominion held a Virginia is For Lovers instagram contest, where they invited Riverrock attendees to upload their photos from the weekend with a special hash tag and twitter handle. Each night, judges would pick their favorite photo, and the submitter would get a prize. At any given point, anyone could see all the submissions on Instragram by searching “#VAis4Lovers.” You can still search on instagram with #VAis4Lovers to see all our photos.
On Day 1, the CCAN crew successful uploaded over 30 photos to the contest, comprising about a quarter of the overall submissions. Posing with atheletes, spectators, and even Dominion’s “Green Team” of recyclers who volunteered at the festival posed with us to show their support and call on Dominion to stop their corporate greenwashing and invest in real climate solution, like wind and solar. Day 2 brought a new challenge- how can we make our photos as visually compelling as the other submissions? To attract more attention to our message, we decided to create photo collages of each competiton from the day, and get a little more creative. One of my favorites is the slackline collage, which you can see here.
Over the weekend, we talked with Boulderers, Runners, Bikers, Slackliners, Kayakers, and more, but what was even better than successfully photobombing Dominion’s Instagram contest, was the enthusiastic support we received from everyone we talked to. Although not everyone knew that Dominion is VA’s top climate pollutor, many people weren’t suprised- and also were not fooled by their greenwashing tactics, like sponsoring Riverrock.
Dominion needs to give the people what they want– real clean energy solutions– so we can all continue to run, hike, and kayak without the risks of code red air, more intense allergy seasons, and dried up rivers.
