Virginia Solomon is an active part of the community with a passion for creating positive change toward equity and fostering queer community.
While teaching at the University of Utah as an art historian and Honors College professor, and owning Park City Yoga Collective with their wife, they also serve on the Park City Community Foundation board, and they’re president of Summit Pride’s board.
Summit Pride, formerly Park City LGBTQ+ Task Force, announced their official 501(c)(3) nonprofit status and new name at the end of May 2024, in preparation for this year’s pride month. Virginia has been a part of the organization since 2021, after it began to spin off from the internal group founded within Park City Municipal in 2020.
“I think that these [LGBTQ+] organizations continue to be important — they continue to be necessary — because there continues to be a need for social support. There continues to be a need for advocacy. There continues to be a need for education,” Virginia said.
Virginia, who is an avid lover of dogs and mountain biking, grew up in the D.C. area, and has since lived in New York, California, and Tennessee, before settling in Park City in 2019. They are also the board president for the Professional Mountain Bike Instructors Association.
They joined the Community Foundation board because they have a sense of pride and passion for the work. “The way we connect, convene, and think outside of the box to solve the most pressing problems of our community, that’s something we truly live up to,” Virginia said.
They went on to talk about how proud they are of the Community Foundation’s commitment to equity, both advancing it within the community at large, and within the Community Foundation itself. They were eager to join the board when the opportunity presented itself in 2020, so they could be a part of giving back to the community they were joining.
It was the next year that Virginia was able to join the LGBTQ+ Task Force, as it was formed by Park City Municipal.
“I wanted to help make and build queer community in the area, and so Summit Pride has been an awesome opportunity to be able to do that,” Virginia said, adding that many other people have been doing the work before them and alongside them. “There are just so many great people who care so much about queer community and about the larger community here in Park City and Park City adjacent.”
The focus of the organization has been largely on creating social community among queer folk in the area, education and leadership opportunities for LGBTQ+ individuals, and outward advocacy, while being a resource for the broader community to learn how to better show up as allies. They said they haven’t encountered anyone in the local city, county, nonprofit, or for-profit sectors who have been antagonistic.
“It’s more a matter of being present and answering questions and being connected so that we can lovingly point out when people are making mistakes rather than actually fighting battles,” Virginia said. “Luckily, for the battles that we have to fight at the state level, we have allies at the county and city, and again nonprofit, and for-profit spaces locally.”
The main reason for the name change to Summit Pride was to better include the whole Summit County and wider Wasatch Back area in the work the organization is doing. Virginia said they don’t want it to feel as though their focus is only on Park City, and not the rest of the community.
As far as hopes and plans as an official nonprofit, Summit Pride intends to continue to do the same advocacy and community work, but now with more flexibility around how it uses its funds and chances to partner with other organizations. Virginia added they hope to eventually hire a part-time executive director to help operate Summit Pride, as currently the organization is volunteer run.
Virginia also said Summit Pride has money set aside for anyone who cannot afford to participate as a volunteer, if for example they cannot afford a babysitter or to take time off work to attend meetings.
Virginia said a huge part of the importance of organizations such as Summit Pride, and the Community Foundation, is offering solutions for the root-causes of problems. “I think that pride events continue to be important,” Virginia said. “We’re seeing an escalation of attacks on our community, and there’s a mental toll that takes.”
Summit Pride offers a place for queer people to be in community, meet like-minded people, and not worry about the assumptions others in those spaces are making about them. They can experience queer and trans-joy together, without always having to talk about the challenges they face as a community. This sort of work can address the mental health issues of LGBTQ+ people at its root cause and offer some levity.
A big part of Virginia’s work at the University of Utah is around contemporary art, often with a focus on how it can address the ramifications of problems such as sexism, racism, transphobia, and homophobia on the way the world is.
“To my mind what makes contemporary art good is the stuff that’s able to ask and provide creative answers to some of those questions,” Virginia said, “And that’s a lens that I bring to how I want to show up in community organizations.”
As an advocate, educator, and new parent, Virginia has a lot of investment and engagement in this community, and thus a lot of hope for its future. One of their main hopes for the community relates to the Park City Leadership Class project they were involved in. Virginia helped initiate and co-lead Class 29’s Let’s Talk project, which has brought a training on how to have difficult conversations to hundreds of community members and is now being run by Mountain Mediation Center.
“It seems like we’re addressing problems by trying to prove each other wrong, rather than understanding what each other’s values and priorities and experiences are and coming to compromises from that,” Virginia said.
They believe problems like our contributions to climate change, housing affordability, traffic, issues within schools, etc., could be better addressed if as a community we approached them by first finding common ground.
“You can’t solve problems if you can’t communicate effectively and approach people with different opinions than yours as people who have things that matter to them, that are important. The way in which we demonize people who disagree with us makes it so that there’s just no way forward,” Virginia said.
They believe the Community Foundation is a place that can start the respectful dialogue needed to bridge gaps and bring about change. “I see us [the Community Foundation] being a place that can start to instill some of this healthier dialogue and ability to disagree, but still remain in relationship and in community with each other,” Virginia said.
Summit Pride has been active this Pride Month with lots of events, but if you’ve missed them don’t worry, they host events year-round, because as Virginia put it “we’re queer 12 months a year.”