Retrospective
Excursion to Detroit and Chicago - experiencing and designing cultural spaces
In the summer semester of 2025, students of the Arts Management and Cultural Work degree programme had the special opportunity to take an in-depth look at the role of cultural actors in urban transformation processes as part of the English-language seminar "Doing Culture in Detroit: How Social Space in Neighborhoods and a Sense of Belonging Shape a City". The seminar, led by Dr Kerstin Niemann, conveyed theoretical concepts such as social space, placemaking, belonging and public familiarity, which were vividly supplemented by international case studies and discussions with actors - especially from Detroit.
The focus was on questions such as: How do cultural and social initiatives shape the image of a city? How is a sense of belonging created in different neighbourhoods?
As a practical highlight of the seminar, three students travelled to Detroit and Chicago at the end of July to meet key players from the local cultural scene and gather their own impressions. In Detroit, they met representatives from the music scene such as Underground Resistance/Submerge, Pure Rave and Third Man Records, as well as artists from initiatives such as the Talking Dolls Gallery, Popps Packing and the Sidewalk Festival.
Housed in an artist house in Hamtramck - a city characterised by migration in the city of Detroit - the students experienced cultural diversity and everyday life. In cooperation with Thomas Baldischwyler, a Hamburg based artist, who was invited as a research resident at FILTER Detroit, they organised the workshop "Material, Resource and Memories: Vinyl as a Map" at the Elaine L. Jacobs Gallery at Wayne State University. The starting point was a sound installation by the artist collective Pure Rave, part of the exhibition Those Who Keep Strange Hours. The workshop focused on the memory of records as cultural objects. How were they used? What significance did they hold as carriers of personal stories, or as "travel tickets" to other worlds?
The experiences in Detroit — from encounters with artists and musicians to conversations with neighbours — resulted in a joint zine entitled "A Week of Detroit", which was designed and printed on site (PDF, see attachment). (PDF available in attachment.)
The journey then continued. The group travelled past Lake Michigan to Chicago, where they got to know other cultural initiatives and urban gardening projects.
Many thanks to Prof. Dr Julia Glesner, Prof. Dr Ulrich Richtmeyer and Prof. Dr Renate Ruhne from the Cultural Work degree programme, whose support made this inspiring excursion possible in the first place.
- Zine „A Week of Detroit" (PDF, 17.17 MB)© Kerstin Niemann
