Three University of Michigan faculty members are part of a team who won an international design competition that will unite 12 cultural and educational institutions located in Detroit’s Midtown and change the way visitors and Detroiters experience the area.

“I mean, I think if we’re honest, we originally thought we could, at the least, change the nature of the conversation by putting our ideas on the table. And then we got through to the final three, and then we were selected as winners—and I’m just really proud that all the stakeholders appreciated our knowledge and perspective and trust us to carry it through.”

More than 150 community members gathered to celebrate a year of “making” at the Brightmoor Maker Space recently. The Detroit Community Schools and the University of Michigan’s Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design hosted the open house to celebrate its first academic year in operation.

Nick Tobier has spent a lot of time on the Detroit People Mover. Teaching, exploring, observing, escaping.
On a rare sunny day in February, sandwiched between snow and ice storms, we boarded the city’s iconic monorail together at the Grand Circus Park station, just outside the David Whitney building. Tobier happily paid my 75 cent fare (he prefers buying the tokens — “I feel good when I have them in my pocket,” he says) and led me up the escalator to the platform.

When Craig Wilkins looked out into the audience during his team’s presentation at the Detroit Institute of Arts on Wednesday, he was happy to see many of his University of…

Students and faculty at the Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design are working with a neighborhood alliance in Detroit to launch an incubator for creative enterprises and a community space for developing skills.

For more than a decade, Detroit Connections, a series of courses offered through Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design, has been bringing students, staff and faculty from U-M’s Ann Arbor campus into two partner schools in Detroit to lead weekly art workshops and design collaborative projects with youth.