Community-focused online Boston mag stops by Detroit's Arts & Scraps

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.


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