Detroit Summer "Another Detroit is Happening" Mural
The Detroit Summer Live Arts Media Project has launched an interactive community mural project around the theme of "Another Detroit is Happening."  Leading up to the AMC, Detroit Summer youth developed the mural concept through conversations with elders, farmers, artists, activists and other community-transformers. In the Rad Art track of the AMC, Detroit Summer partnered with the Beehive Design Collective and the Justseeds Artists' Cooperative to design the mural and create silkscreened posters that will be incorporated into the mural. 

• It will take place in conjunction with the Allied Media Conference and the US Social Forum, two events which, combined, will bring over 20,000 people to Detroit.  We will be working with youth organizations from all over the country to help us execute the project.
  
• It will led by Jon Blount, Starlet Lee and Andrea Ridges, three of the participants in the original LAMP (2006), who have now transitioned into program leaders and will be planting the seeds of leadership with a new group of 10 Detroit youth. 
  
• We will be returning to our roots of "live art media-making" through community murals, while putting a new multi-media spin on it.  We will partner with local and national artists, including Sterling Toles, Joe Namy, The Beehive Design Collective and JustSeeds Artists' Cooperative to create a multi-media, multi-sited, interactive community mural!  (Read more below). 
  

Detroit Summer requests $20,000 for the The 2010 Live Arts Media Project (LAMP), which will take place this summer, leading up to and throughout, the Allied Media Conference and United States Social Forum. The 2010 LAMP will build the creative leadership and community problem-solving skills of 10 young people from Detroit.  In the first phase of the program, we will take field trips to 10 neighborhoods throughout the city, where people are organizing community-based solutions to social and economic crises.  From the stories we gather in those interviews, we will forge a narrative of “Another Detroit” that is happening in the midst of mainstream stories about Detroit.  From there, we will go through a series of workshops with artists at the Allied Media Conference to turn the narrative into a mural design.  We will invite the help of out-of-town visitors to paint the mural during the United States Social Forum.  In July, following the AMC and USSF, we will produce interactive media and popular education tools to accompany the mural.  

Background: 

Detroit summer is a youth organization that has been building youth leadership since 1992 by creating murals and gardens in partnership with communities all over the city. In 2006, we applied the same model of community-visioning through murals to a hip-hop audio documentary titled, Rising Up From The Ashes: Chronicles Of A Drop Out.  This  CD features interviews that youth conducted with peers, teachers, administrators, asking questions that get to the heart of Detroit's drop-out crisis.  It also features original beats, poetry and hip hop from local artists. Since then, we've used the CD as a tool to spark dialogue and creative problem-solving because we believe young people's creativity is the most valuable resource our city has for solving the many crises we face.   The 2010 Live Arts Media Project  will build off the 16 years of experience that we have leading community-based art projects, with youth.   

Goals:The 2010 Live Arts Media Project will illuminate the incredible work of community healing and transformation happening in Detroit and it will grow the number of people who are committed to doing that work.  We will cultivate the leadership of 10 Detroit youth, whose participation in the 2010 LAMP will lead to deeper levels of investment in shaping the future of our city.  We will inspire visitors in town for the AMC and USSF  to  make a commitment to Detroit – whether by moving here or by supporting the work here from afar.  We will disseminate the solutions, now emerging from Detroit, which the rest of the world needs to know, as global economics impact more and more places they way they have impacted Detroit.    

Key Personnel and Partners: 

This project will be led by the Detroit Summer LAMP coordinators: Jon Blount, Andrea Ridges, Starlet Lee, Ilana Weaver and Jenny Lee. Sterling Toles and Joe Namy will be lead artists. The Beehive Design Collective and Justeeds Artists' Cooperative will be national partners.  Partner organizations for the pre-mural interviews will include: The Hush House, The Detroit Coalition Against Police Brutality, The Heidelberg Project, The Boggs Center to Nurture Community Leadership, 5 Elements Hip Hop Gallery, Capuchin Soup Kitchen/Earthworks Garden, The Ruth Ellis Center, Catherine Ferguson Academy, and more, to be determined.