Detroit Sees: pilot project in Detroit Design Festival

We are pleased that the Detroit Sees pilot project will be a part of the Detroit Design Festival, operated by the Detroit Creative Corridor Center. Photography workshops will be held at the Frederick Douglass branch of the Detroit Public Library, at Anna Scripps Park, from 1 to 4 p.m. on September 10, 17, and 24. During the third Saturday of the program, from 2 to 4 p.m., the public is invited to an unveiling of the installation, viewing the process of participants pasting up their original photographs at 3723 Trumbull.

Detroit Sees: Helping Drive Creative Neighborhoods

Time: Unveiling of installation 2 to 4 p.m. on 9/24

Location: Woodbridge
3723 Trumbull (Between Martin Luther King Blvd. & Canfield Ave.)

Overview: Detroit Sees is a pilot project of Forward Arts’ visual arts program, Access Arts Detroit. It includes community photography workshops and installations that enliven boarded up buildings in Detroit. Ultimately, Detroit Sees will provide meaningful and creative civic engagement opportunities focused on community driven expression that will help beautify neighborhoods in Detroit. The workshops and installations will serve as a center point for Detroit’s community members to become acquainted and share talents while providing a creative outlet.

Detroit Sees: public photography program

Detroit Sees is working with the AmeriCorps Midtown Urban Safety Project (AMUS), Woodbridge Neighborhood Development Corporation (WNDC), Forward Arts through its public art and education program, Access Arts Detroit, and their community based networks to build upon previously established civic engagement programs in Detroit’s Midtown area, starting with Woodbridge.  Detroit Sees will invite members of the community to converge upon the abandoned buildings boarded up by WNDC & AMUS to share stories, ideas and visions through conversation-driven public art making. Through weekly workshops, project participants will be introduced to photographic techniques to make, produce and display images on the boarded up windows and doors of the structures.

Mock-up of images on 3753 Trumbull (photos by AJ Viola, shot in Woodbridge: 1, Scripps Park; 2, 4, Commonwealth/Avery, 3, The Lodge/MLK)

Mock-up of images on 1764 Calumet (photos by AJ Viola, shot in North Corktown: 1, Brother Nature Produce; 2, Spirit Farm)