Led by Victoria Shaw, “Making Change through Making Art” will bring together Detroit-based visual artists with students from Detroit Public Schools Community District in a new art-making elective class to explore how engaging with visual arts can promote social justice activism.

Alumnus Leon Pryor excelled in careers at Microsoft, Amazon, and now Meta. The he renowned video game engineer co-founded The Motor City Alliance to make Detroit a powerhouse for FIRST Robotics teams. And it’s working.

The Bell Family Scholarship Fund is intended to assist students who hail from Detroit and who plan to pursue the Detroit teaching school pathway. It was started by Stacy and Joseph Giles to honor Stacy’s parents and sister, who were educators.

“One thing I found very beneficial was the exposure our young people received in the communications training and the opportunity for them to have something they crafted come to life. With the young people we serve, many of them have said they don’t feel that their voices are heard. Being able to have a platform to elevate their voices and their brilliance has been immeasurable.”
~ Courtney Smith, founder and CEO of the Detroit Phoenix Center

After a year-long pause due to Covid-19 precautions, the 21 students in this year’s “Children in Peril” class undertook a semester-long project collaborating with School of Music, Theatre & Dance graduate music composition students, Alfredo Cabrera and Nicholas Felder.

Cadillac Urban Gardens doesn’t just grow produce. It grow leaders and environmental stewards, says U-M alumna Sarah Clark, who founded the garden. Clark started working with Dolores Perales in 2013 when she was a sophomore at Detroit Cristo Rey High School. Perales went on to earn dual master’s degrees from U-M.

U-M’s Poverty Solutions initiative collaborated with the Detroit Phoenix Center to develop a series of communications workshops for the Summer Leadership Academy on owning your narrative, defining your point of view, using data to support your point, and crafting advocacy statements. 

“We hope it  is an experience of wonder and joy and delight. Just being out there on the water, enjoying the bounty, the beauty of the river, can have a lastingly powerful effect in itself on people’s sense of connection with their place in the world.”

~ David Porter, U-M English professor

“I did a lot of guest consulting at a lot of suburban schools. And I noticed that when I crossed Eight Mile, I didn’t see kids with instrument cases walking down the street. At that time, most of the schools in Detroit did not have music programs. So I decided to start Crescendo to make sure students had the opportunity to be in music.”

~ Damien Crutcher