Defining Detroit Collection News

We are pleased to announce that the Michigan Humanities Council has awarded the Marygrove Conservancy a $15,000 grant to establish the Defining Detroit Collection (DDC). This project’s overarching goal is to digitize and preserve an important Detroit historical and cultural collection to ensure widespread and long-term accessibility.

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Over Defining Detroit’s two-decade existence, its organizers have compiled an extensive collection of images, video recordings, print materials, and other primary sources offering a unique record of serious attention to Detroit history, literature, art, and culture. DDC will be a digitized, open-access, online archive of series materials of great value to scholars, students, and the general public, those interested in Detroit culture as well as devotees of specific writers, artists, historians, and genres. Creation of lesson-plans guided by arts-infused education (AIE) pedagogy will increase the DDC’s materials’ usefulness to elementary and secondary school teachers and students. The Marygrove grant team—comprising former faculty, staff, and students—has enlisted the support of K-12 teachers, and Detroit Historical Society archivists to preserve these materials and those of CAALS, make them accessible, and increase their usefulness to new audiences.  

 

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