Love + Grit Storefronts Project aims to help struggling businesses, local artists

ByWendy Daughenbaugh WPVI logo

Wednesday, December 22, 2021

Love+Grit gives lifeline to struggling businesses, local artists

The Love+Grit Storefronts project is a push to shop small Black- and Brown-owned businesses while supporting local artists.

PHILADELPHIA (WPVI) -- In neighborhoods throughout the city, businesses that couldn't survive the pandemic now have their windows filled with the work of a local artist.

It is the Love+Grit Storefronts project, a push to shop small Black- and Brown-owned businesses in the city while also supporting local artists and beautifying empty storefronts.

Visit Philly partnered with 12 BIPOC artists on the project; each chose two businesses.

West Philadelphia's Nazeer Sabree selected Yowie, a woman-owned lifestyle shop in Queen Village, as the inspiration for one of his artworks. The two talked about entrepreneurship and the influence of their mothers. That conversation led to Sabree's work of art at 1500 Market, depicting a mother and daughter.

Each piece of art includes a brief bio on the artist and the business, along with a QR code that will take you to the project's website where you can enter the Love + Grit sweepstakes, with a collection of prizes from 24 local businesses valued at $2,000.

The project is part of the city's Shop Black Business Friday initiative, that started last December and is back again this year.

It's also an outgrowth of Visit Philly's Love + Grit podcast. Launched at the start of the pandemic, it shares stories of entrepreneurial resilience.

Sabree hopes the storefronts project can serve as a window for change, sparking creativity in viewers and perhaps inspiring someone to take a risk and start that journey of art and/or entrepreneurship.