East Side : Buzz

Journalist Desiree Cooper asks the tough questions about urban farming and Detroit's future on the DPTV series Sustainable Detroit, which aired its second episode Sunday nationally on PBS. She talks of the next wave of fortune-seekers to the city -- not property-flippers, but hoe-wielding gardeners who see promoting urban agriculture as a necessary next step for repairing, as Cooper says, the city's social fabric.

Excerpt:

"If you're a caring person and you're surrounded by what seems to be just nothingness, it's a heavy, heavy burden," said Myrtle, adding that the gardens are a visible sign that someone on the block values the land, themselves and others. "When property is neglected, it says, 'We don't care, we can get away with dumping, and we can get away with vile behavior because nobody is watching.'" What they are really planting, said Myrtle, is a revolution in values.

Check out Cooper's blog, and cllick here to watch the video.

To celebrate its first year of work, the dynamo arts organization Forward Arts added a new event to its repertoire -- the donation-based Art Ride, which took 100 patrons to lesser-ventured city creations like Hamtramck Disneyland, Heidelberg satellite project Street Folk 2 and Power House Productions.

The bike ride culminated at Woodbridge's Anna Scripps Park, where Access Arts hosted seven installations and a number of workshops and showcases from its students. As the Knight Arts blog reports, over 15 organizations and stakeholders came together to put on the show.

Excerpt:

This is a clear example of why art improves the quality of our lives. On a sunny day, kids built forts with their family and neighbors, and a diverse crowd admired the art pieces, while mingling in the park and snaking on delicious treats from the Pink FlaminGO! food truck. It created a positive energy that people were attracted to, and everyone walked away with a little bit of culture, whether (sic) they expected to or not.

Photographs and more available here.

The Discovery Channel's new miniseries, Detroit in Overdrive, appearing on Planet Green, digs in deep. While familiar faces like Motor City Denim's Joe Faris and Kid Rock get their due, this vid searches out the "tangible faces behind those big buildings" for the three-part special, which originally aired Aug. 4. That means Maria's Comida, the Sphinx Organization and CCS student and designer Veronika Scott are among the long list of the city's community members and do-gooders sharing the spotlight with Detroit's superstars. We like it.

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The Russell Industrial center functions as a community space for artists, craftspeople, and small businesses. Edith Floyd stands up for what she believes in by building an urban garden where abandoned houses once stood. Last, Kristyn Koth and Malik Muqaribu feed Detroiters in their 1956 Airstream, the Pink Flamingo, bringing fresh organic food to Detroiters in a unique mobile food truck, spearheading a local food movement.

Find out more about Detroit in Overdrive here.

The Christian Science Monitor made Detroit the subject of an exhaustive cover story on the struggle between the city's power players -- union heads, city officials, neighborhood leaders, and more -- to create a plan for right-sizing both the city's landscape and services it provides to citizens. This article digs beyond the cliches to provide a balanced look at the varied interests and stakeholders involved in Detroit's immediate plans for renewal, from the Mayor's office to the one-acre urban farm.

Excerpt:

Evidence of that small-town environment is the escalation of urban farms in Detroit that are repurposing empty lots. There are 875 urban farms and community gardens operating throughout the city, a network of which is providing affordable, pesticide-free food at neighborhood farmers' markets, restaurants and retail outlets, according to Detroit Works Project data. Green growth is everywhere – from small tomato plantings in a patch of a corner lot on a residential street to large orchard tracts planned by John Hantz, a local businessman who plans to build "the world's largest urban farm" in Detroit.Read the rest of the story here.

Hey, East Side Model D readers -- we've got the lead on a summer outing just for you. Residents of these East Side zip codes -- 48205, 48207, 48211, 48213, 48214, 48215, 48224, and 48234 -- are eligible to participate in a day of kayaking along the Detroit River. The kayak adventure is presented by the Conner Creek Greenway, a project put on by the Detroit Eastside Community Collaborative. For only $5 a head, paddlers will explore both the Detroit Rive, the Fisher Mansion and the numerous canals along the waterfront.

Two tours will embark on Aug. 13 from Maheras Gentry Park where Conner meets the river at 9 a.m. and 1 p.m. We can't think of a better way to enjoy the city's natural splendor (while keeping cool!). Click here for more information and contact Libby or Caitlin at 313-571-2800 ext. 1159 to register for either expedition.

A century and a half ago, adventurers, dreamers and gamblers alike headed west to seek freedom and fortune. A new article in YES! Magazine hails Detroit as the new American frontier for the modern-day visionary. Urban agriculture, cheap land, yes -- Detroit has these things, and more. But, author Aaron M. Renn notes, the city's relatively lax attitude avoids a pattern of interference, which often hampers development in stronger cities. And that's birthed a community of "self-determinants," working together to create something closer to utopia out of the ruins.

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Whether this trend really pumps life back into Detroit remains to be seen. But it has done one essential thing: it has created an aspirational narrative of success in Detroit that other Americans might imagine themselves being a part of. If that starts to attract people in sufficient numbers to reverse core city population decline, Detroit could be at the start of the long road back.

Say yes. Read more here.

A new essay written about the East Side's Heidelberg Project calls the decades-old installation a meditation on God and a symbol of spiritual fortitude. We've all seen the brightly painted circles and sneakers hanging from trees, but Suzette Martinez Standring's interview with Tyree Guyton goes beyond the art to find the metaphysical metaphors in his work. An interesting piece, for believers and art-appreciators alike.

Excerpt:

One fanciful creation was made up of sneakers, sandals, wingtips and platform shoes that hung like ornaments from a fat tree. But an amusing first impression belies the pain behind "Soles of the Most High." Guyton, an African-American artist, said his grandfather used to tell him stories about "Negro lynchings," (where) "you couldn't see the people, but you could see the soles of their shoes."

Yet the artwork goes beyond hatred. "It is a haunting reminder of lynchings in the South, but today the positive message is that we are lifting up the souls of the community," said executive director Jenenne Whitfield.

Read more here.

Just a few clicks of the mouse can make a difference. The Pepsi Refresh Project gives millions of dollars away to crowd-picked ideas and charities across the planet -- and one new dream has an address right here in Detroit city.

Mitch Cope and Gina Reichert, the force behind Power House Productions (responsible for bringing last year's Juxtapoz art installation to the East Side neighborhood north of Hamtramck), have a new project on the Pepsi Refresh Project website -- and they need your votes. The dream? Building a combination found sculpture park and skateboarding space for kids in the same neighborhood where they live and build.

It doesn't cost a thing but a few seconds of time. Cast your vote here.

"The gardens are everywhere," writes food scribe Mark Bittman in a moving editorial in the New York Times Opinionator blog. His chronicle of a visit to our city describes Detroit's burgeoning food movement powered by the breadth of our residents' imagination -- and the belief that only we will turn this city around. Local food in public schools. The Peaches & Greens produce truck. And acres and acres of cultivated land, harvesting not only food, but a key to this city's future. If the journey is as important as the destination, Bittman concludes, Detroit's back-to-basics green revival is already a success story.

Excerpt:

As Jackie Victor, co-owner of the Avalon Bakery, an unofficial meeting place for the Detroit food movement, says to me, "Imagine a city, rebuilt block by block, with a gorgeous riverfront, world class museums and fantastic local food. Everyone who wants one has a quarter-acre garden, and every kid lives within bike distance of a farm."

Imagine. Read more here.

Why Detroit? From an artistic standpoint, our creators and visionaries have nothing to lose -- and nobody standing in their way. This new story from BBC Travel paints a portrait of Detroit as a city increasingly shaped by the cultural vanguard. Corktown, which is seeing plenty of commercial development, also gets some love (read more about what's going on in Corktown here.)

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As Detroit continues the fight of its life, artists and visionaries are slowly returning to the city to take advantage of the cheap rent and open spaces. While some have compared Detroit to a war zone, its burgeoning artistic community looks at it like a playground.

"I see the magic here. This city has been known to come back," artist Tyree Guyton said. "There's this new energy that's creating art all over the city. [A colleague] said in the past that the new industry in the city of Detroit is art and culture. I believe it. I see it."

Read the rest of the story here.

Community Development Corporations (CDCs) normally ignite a neighborhood's development. So what do CDCs do when a city is shrinking? This article takes a look at community development groups working on the ground in here and in Clevelend, where our Rust Belt friends are feeling a similar loss of population. As this article notes, our CDCs have been imagining Detroit as a smaller city long before the Detroit Works Project -- and they're leading the way to transform meta ideas on strategic framework into practical plans to revive neighborhoods.

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Meanwhile, Detroit's CDCs have not been idle. Once the CDAD report came out, its members turned to the tough task of figuring out how to bring the framework down to the ground. During the past year, a CDAD working group led by Sam Butler, former executive director of Creekside CDC on Detroit's East Side and now part of the Detroit Vacant Properties Campaign, partnered with Data-Driven Detroit (D3) to develop indicators of neighborhood conditions that could be used by CDCs and neighborhood groups to evaluate their own conditions. "We're trying to make information accessible," says Butler. "We need to give residents a way to talk about their neighborhoods, to empower them to think strategically."

Read the rest of the article here.

Rustwire.net's Richey Piiparinen was in town for last week's Rust Belt to Artist Belt conference, but he admits his attention was waning. So he snuck out for a photo adventure -- to find the art in our city. It was easier than he imagined. A perfectly placed Church's Chicken, a Communist-eque building facade, Tyree Guyton's new exhibit, fake flowers in The Whitney gardens. Sometimes it's worth seeing your everyday surroundings through the lens of an outsider.

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And while the goal of my journey was to find the art of Detroit as opposed to hear how art's going to "remake it" what I found was a city percolating with life just fine: with people, and buses, and stretches of vacant-less blocks. And yes, I found signs of a death. But in this death I found something else. Something that a one-time giant has that current day giants are incapable of having given the fact these latter giants haven't yet needed to be reborn.

View the photos here.

Model D captain Walter Wasacz's vision of Detroit is sent to your online mailbox every Tuesday. He got the chance to elaborate on Detroit's development from the ground up during a recent broadcast of WJR's "Destination 313" radio show, hosted by Paul W. Smith and Quicken Loans VP Stephen Luigi Piazza.

Managing editor Wasacz joined a group of movers and shakers from many different worlds in Detroit, including President and CEO of Olympia Entertainment Tom Wilson, Friar Ray Stadmeyer from the On The Rise bakery, and Blue Cross Blue Shield VP Tricia Keith.

Not to stroke our ego, but Luigi Piazza tossed us some rather high praise.

Excerpt:

I really believe in the Model D magazine. It's a lot of feet-on-the-street stories, the stories that, again, Paul says don't get covered: the smaller stories. We had Tom Wilson on, and he was talking about the young kids that really and truly talk about all the different communities that are being established, all the different little restaurants that are there, the things that you can do in the city, that, at 70 miles an hour, we don't see driving around the expressway. You cover that, right on the street, down to the nitty-gritty.

Find out more about the show and listen to the podcast here.

A Boston-based online magazine that focuses on social issues drops in on Detroit's Arts & Scraps. Arts & Scraps, on Detroit's East Side, is 21 years old. The nonprofit recycles materials and with them helps create an environment of arts education with the local kids.

Excerpt from the New Prosperity Initiative:

NPi: What are one or two things about your organization you may want to share that aren't necessarily obvious by visiting your website?

Peg: When we say recycled industrial scraps, gasket scraps, or samples, it doesn't mean anything. It's very hard for people to visualize that. The hardest part is helping people understand how unique and weird and fun all these materials are. It's all safe. You can build things using adhesive pieces, but no glue or paint. Everything can go together without presenting mechanical challenges for children so they can really focus on what they're thinking about and building.

The other thing we have a hard time showing is just how many people really contribute to this place. We get 10,000 volunteer hours per year. Each year, two hundred people with disabilities work or volunteer with us through vocational training programs. 180 factories have people set aside things from the line here and there and make piles. They're excited when we come to pick everything up. It's a connecting of many sectors.

In a city built the way Detroit was built and divided the way Detroit is divided, there aren't many neutral places where everybody comes together and it's easy to talk. You hop on a bus and nobody talks to anybody… Here, we get people from all over metro Detroit who care about kids to share ideas and talk. We're a neutral place.

Read the entire article here.