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Correction: An earlier version of this story stated that 85 tiles were selected from around 100 created. About 100 people stopped by the pop-ups; 85 tiles were created in all, and all 85 are part of the mosaic. The story has been updated.
ALEXANDRIA, Va. — A community mosaic of 85 tiles created by Alexandrians at three Local News Day pop-ups in April was unveiled Thursday evening at the Torpedo Factory Art Center before a crowd of about two dozen, capping a community journalism project organized by Bloom Labs and supported by three local newsrooms.
The artwork — called "Tiles & Type" — is on display through the summer on the second floor of the Torpedo Factory, to the left of the entrance to classroom studio 221.
The mosaic was assembled from tiles created during pop-up events held over the weekend of April 11-12 at St. Elmo's Coffee Pub in Del Ray, the Old Town North Farmers Market, and the Four Mile Run Farmers Market. The events were part of the inaugural national Local News Day, which drew more than 1,400 local newsrooms and 340 partner organizations across all 50 states in a coordinated push to connect communities with the journalists who cover them.
Bloom Labs was one of those 340 partners.
Speaking at the reception, Bloom Labs founder Stephen Jefferson said the team saw the inaugural Local News Day as an opportunity to put Alexandria on the map by showing how the city supports community-driven journalism — both its current independent newsrooms and its more than 200-year history of newspaper publishing.
"It was really up to us to determine how we were going to represent our city," Jefferson said. "We saw Local News Day as an opportunity to not only inform the community about how they can support local news today, but also share with them the history, introduce them to journalists face-to-face, and listen to what information needs are most prominent right now."
About 100 people stopped by the pop-ups across the two days, Jefferson said, with 85 tiles created in all. The topics ranged across affordable housing, bike lanes and walkability, education, art and culture, the environment, animal shelters, youth fostering, construction, and maternity homes. Other tiles carried sharper messages — including "No Human Is Illegal" and a call for "fact-based reporting".
"What I found so interesting was that as they were drawing, we were having conversations with them, and it became very apparent how these were not just ordinary topics," Jefferson said. "They were writing based on their lived experience. They were sensitive to these topics because of how they have been personally impacted by them. These people trusted us with this information, and it became a safe space."
The mosaic itself is the result of piecing together those individual contributions into a unified community artwork — a task Jefferson described as the biggest challenge of the project. "We had to represent the community as a whole while at the same time respecting individual perspectives."
Jefferson said the pop-ups produced concrete impact even before the unveiling. Many visitors who hadn't previously known the participating newsrooms began supporting them that weekend. Donations were collected toward the fundraising campaign for Theogony, the student newspaper of Alexandria City High School. And one Theogony student journalist was offered an internship at Fairway to Green, a local golf company, after a conversation at one of the pop-ups.
The participating newsrooms were The Alexandria Brief — this publication — alongside ALXnow and Theogony.
Speaking at the reception, Brief publisher Ryan Belmore said what resonated most from the weekend was watching Alexandrians pause at the tile board mid-errand, pick up a marker, and write what they care about.
"What people wrote on those tiles wasn't a list of complaints," Belmore said. "It was a list of things they care about. A community telling us, in real time, in their own handwriting, what matters to them. That's the work. That's what local journalism is supposed to do — reflect a community back to itself."
Bloom Labs is now beginning to think about the 2027 Local News Day, Jefferson said.
The Tiles & Type mosaic is on view at the Torpedo Factory Art Center, 105 N. Union Street, on the second floor through the summer in partnership with The Art League.
Editor's Note: This story is intentionally light on close-up tile photos — go see the mosaic at the Torpedo Factory through the summer.
Ryan Belmore
