The Charles H. Wright Museum won a Knight Arts Challenge grant for a video installation project to illuminate Detroit’s streets with the faces of city elders. Here Jerrard Wheeler provides an update.  By Jerrard Wheeler, Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History

The Wright Museum will be shining a light on the rich and vibrant historical legacy of the nearby North End community.

The Oakland Avenue Artists Coalition (OAAC) has suggested a site for Shine a Light which proves to be everything we have been searching for. The video installation will be projected on the side of a historical building that currently houses a community-owned business. The surrounding area is significantly dark. The site receives a large volume of traffic; from cyclists traversing the area, from motorists due of the nature of the nearby intersection – which acts as a gateway between Detroit and the neighboring city of Hamtramck – and an interstate highway. Most importantly, this project is backed by community members, and serves to keep the historical community memory alive in the North End.

OAAC is “a grassroots community organization whose mission is to serve as a catalyst for the transformation of Oakland Avenue into the North End’s art corridor.” OAAC, which encourages and engages local youth in practicing positive self-expression, is creating a local economy that sustains artists while uplifting the community through innovative projects that incorporate the history of the North End as the neighborhood launches into the future.

Shine a Light’s projection is poised to illuminate a historic building on Oakland Ave. which lies within a 1-mile stretch of a place-making project called O.N.E. Mile.  This project is a collaborative effort between OAAC, an architecture team MODCaR – also a Knight Art Challenge recipient- several community organizations, and North End residents. The goal of O.N.E Mile is to facilitate new cultural production and broadcast the North End’s continued world-wide cultural impact through the curation of spaces for community-led design, social gatherings, and activities.

In a short amount of time, the O.N.E. Mile team has: converted a former barber shop into a planning and information center, installed a mini-cinema in the Oakland Ave. Farm & Market space, upgraded a garage into a performance space “The Garage,” and created a ‘Mothership;’ an homage to the original Mothership created by funk legend George Clinton during his transformation into his musical persona Dr. Funkenstein decades earlier at the Phelps’ Lounge on Oakland Ave. The Mothership  launched with a Legends of Funk all-star free community concert last month. There is a myriad of installations, events, and programs planned along the O.N.E. Mile stretch in the next year.

It is important for the North End to continue programming once the Shine a Light projection period is completed.  Future programming will include film screenings, projection art, and the continued archiving of oral histories from the neighborhood’s elders. It is essential to our project that our partners facilitate the continued use of the projection equipment by the community once the project has ended.

We look forward to Shining a Light in this awesome community.

Please enjoy a brief video of events taking place in the North End.

The Oakland Avenue Artist Coalition (OAAC) members and The Metropolitan Observatory of Digital Culture and Representation (MODCaR)