Skip to main content

ioby has closed its doors. Read more here.

Image selected by project leader

The North End Urban Expressions Art Festival: The Healing 2022

Art & Healing in the North End neighborhood of Detroit.

Leader

Karen Hall

Location

8500 Oakland Detroit, MI 48211

About the project

The North End Urban Expressions Art Festival: The Healing is a showcase of the North End’s creativity, culture, evolution, and a platform to engage and encourage neighborhood youth in positive self-expression over the course of the week. 

The connectedness of spoken word (performance poetry, storytelling), visual art (drawing, painting) and Hip Hop (DJing, Emceeing, Graffiti Muraling, Breaking) will be highlighted as artifacts of healing, community building, beautification, opportunities to destruct marginalization and instruments of education in the history of urban expression during the art festival.

The festival block party day includes performances (hip hop, poetry, jazz, gospel, funk, African drum and dance, and live art), workshops (yoga, reiki, nutrition, gardening, music making, and make and take) and community conversations around food, land, water, and housing justice.

A Jam Session, Food Justice Day, Skate Day, Poetry Slam, Film Festival Day and Block Party all encapsulate the week-long shin ding that is The Healing!

The Steps

  • Share communications with the community about the festival
  • Create & Share event schedule with community
  • Recruit and train volunteers
  • Get partner and city support
  • Purchase supplies and materials (including canvas and paint, etc...)
  • Train youth team on event coordination
  • Create signage, decorations and art for the event
  • Install/stage signage, decorations & art in the park
  • Get park cut and groomed before event
  • Pay performers, instructors, speakers and other vendors.

Why we‘re doing it

The North End Urban Expressions Art Festival: The Healing brings awareness to the great community of artists, resources, people, locations, art and history of the North End.

The event brings together multi-disciplined community members, artists and youth to work on bringing the event to life. Everyone is engaged in a community decision-making process from start to finish. The community’s recommendations for visual and performing artists to be involved were integrated as much as possible.

The event also focused on healing a hurting community. Hurt by the negative perspective of outsiders looking. The event reframes the picture of a neighborhood not as a blank canvas that needs others to add color to but a neighborhood full of color, character and vibrancy on its own. The Healing highlights assets in the neighborhood - people, places, history, food, music, art through celebration. Through the festival we honor the Black Arts & Cultural legacy of the past while showing what the present holds. The event serves to build upon space; highlighting the beauty of parks, gardens and open space through artistic installations both temporary and permanent. We plant flower memorials for our comrades, friends and family no longer here and sing songs and share poems that they can hear from a far. The North End Urban Expressions Art Festival: The Healing serves as amplifier for the neighborhood's heart. 

$2,000.00 / $2,000.00