Join us for an evening of co-learning with Stephen Henderson and the Place-Making Research Cluster.

We will begin the evening with a short group study on the topic of making, unmaking and remaking place in Detroit, through excerpts from the work of local Detroit writers, facilitated by the City Study Stewards. Stephen Henderson will share reflective remarks on his own experience with place-making in Detroit through his Tuxedo Project, and as a journalist for the Detroit Free Press. We will then move into a guided conversation on the topic between Stephen and the students of the Place-Making research cluster, as well as the community.

Stephen Henderson is editorial page editor and a columnist at the Detroit Free Press and a 2014 Pulitzer Prize Winner for his coverage of his native city, Detroit. In 2012, he returned back to his recently abandoned childhood home at 7124 Tuxedo and decided not to leave. This choice led to the creation of the Tuxedo Project, a partnership with Marygrove College and the Knight Foundation, to restore Stephen’s home and to turn it into a writer’s residency, which would benefit the students of Marygrove and the surrounding community. In conversation with the City Study Stewards from the Place-Making research cluster, Stephen will share his own reflections on making, unmaking and remaking place in post-bankruptcy Detroit, as well as the unique features of and vision for transforming a home into a place of learning.

The Place-Making Research Cluster at the Detroit City Study explores the diverse elements that make, unmake and remake place. Students in this cluster take up this question through a variety of disciplines and entry points, including social space, material space, visual space and mental space, as well as the role of art, community, the built environment, deconstruction, affect and power and how they intersect within place. The cluster is motivated by the question, what constitutes “place” and what does it actually hold together? The Place-Making Research Cluster is made up of four PhD students, Joseph Richard DeLeon, Samantha Hobson, Michael RJ Koscielniak, and Shebani Rao. To learn more about the Place-Making research cluster and how you might join their efforts, contact Detroit City Study project director, Shira Schwartz, shiras@umich.edu.

Transportation from Ann Arbor: https://ridemdcc.umich.edu/schedule
There will be a special 6:30 return-ride to Ann Arbor in accommodation of this event.

For more information on this event, contact Shira Schwartz, shiras@umich.edu