Detroit Atlas Collaboration

The Detroit Atlas Collaboration was a city-wide printmaking project, funded by a Knight Arts Challenge Grant (awarded in 2015) and the Michele Schara Artist Residency. This project provided free pop-up printmaking and mapmaking workshops throughout Detroit, including at the CHASS Mercado summer farmer's market, Alternatives for Girls, Detroit Community High School, Genesis Hope Church, Riopelle Artist Collective, Dally in the Alley, Girls Rock Detroit, Capuchin Soup Kitchen’s after school youth art program, one on one workshops, Arab American National Museum (in collaboration with Peace Meal Kitchen) and the Detroit Center for Design and Technology Gallery.

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One printed memory map was collected from each participant, and a selection of map prints were displayed in an exhibition alongside maps created by Alex Hill at Detroitography at the DCDT gallery at LTU in collaboration with the American Institute of Architects Detroit Chapter. The Detroit Atlas Collaboration aimed to convey Detroiters’ experiences in a wide range of neighborhoods within the city through these memory maps, providing context for one another, a juxtaposition of lived experiences of people who live in the same geographic space, but often very different social, political, and historically contextualized spaces. At the conclusion of this project in early 2020, remaining supplies and funding were distributed to local Detroit artists to make their own memory maps and other work. 

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