Arts of Citizenship Awards Faculty and Graduate Student Grants for Community-Based Scholarly Activities in the Arts, Humanities, and Design

The Arts of Citizenship Program at the University of Michigan (U-M) has announced the recipients of its third round of faculty grants for public and community-based scholarly work in the arts, humanities, and design. This year, for the first time, Arts of Citizenship is also awarding grants to graduate students.

David Scobey, associate professor of Architecture and director of Arts of Citizenship, commented, "We received applications from all over campus: LSA, Architecture and Urban Planning, Art and Design, Music, Social Work, Medicine, and Education. The proposals included video projects, community writing programs, dance pieces, and even a recording studio."

The goal of the Arts of Citizenship grants program is to foster research, teaching, and creative projects that explore culture in publicly accessible ways or that encourage innovative teaching and research in collaboration with community partners. Funds for a total of three annual rounds of faculty grants have been provided by the Office of the Vice President for Research and by the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts. Thanks to funding from the Rackham School of Graduate Studies, an additional competition for graduate students was initiated this year.

For the 2001-2002 academic year, an interdisciplinary faculty Selection Committee awarded Arts of Citizenship grants to the following faculty projects:

• Janet Finn (Social Work and Anthropology) and Antonio Alvarez (Social Work and Education) will collaborate with the Neutral Zone, a teen center in Ann Arbor, to help establish and write about a youth-run recording facility.
• Nancy Rose Hunt (History and Obstetrics and Gynecology) will use her grant to produce a video documentary about women's community-health issues in Accra, Ghana. This video will extend her transnational research and training program "Women's Health in the City of Accra."
• Lisa Iwamoto (Architecture) will team with Craig Scott (Architecture) to research commercial architecture in southeastern Michigan "edge cities" and to develop more publicly oriented, ecologically sound designs.
• Joyce Meier (English) will continue a community writing program that partners her U-M students with elders and children from three Detroit community centers. The grant will also afford Meier release time to pursue scholarly writing on the two-year-old project.
• Katherine Mendeloff (Drama, Residential College) and Charles Bright (Social Science, Residential College) will produce a video piece about southwest Detroit activist Pablo Davis, who assisted with Diego Rivera's Detroit murals. The piece will be both an educational documentary and an anchor for a student playwright's script.
• Mark Pomilio (Art) will coordinate an outdoor mural project in partnership with The Corner Health Center in Ypsilanti. Teenaged Ypsilanti artists will train with Pomilio and U-M students and then work alongside an experienced muralist to paint the mural in summer 2001.
• Peter Sparling (Dance) will collaborate on a multimedia installation centering around the history of Dossin Elementary School in northwest Detroit. In addition to events at the school, there will be a full performance at the Detroit Institute of Arts in conjunction with Detroit 300, the celebration of the 300th anniversary of the city. "I am very excited by a number of firsts in these grants," David Scobey commented. "This is the first award we have given for a dance project, the first time we have been able to provide release time for a faculty member to write about community work, and our first international project. And I'm particularly glad that, with Rackham's help, we are supporting graduate student projects for the first time."

Arts of Citizenship's graduate student awards have criteria parallel to those for faculty. From a dozen wide-ranging proposals, the Selection Committee chose four winning projects:

• Kimberly Clum (Social Work and Anthropology) will produce a broadcast-quality audio documentary exploring the effects of recent changes in welfare policy on ordinary families.
• Titus Brooks Heagins (Art) will produce a photoessay about African American families who have maintained strong neighborhood ties in the east side of Detroit.
• Kevin March (Music) will use performances of the Phoenix Ensemble's piece www.love: A 21st Century Romance and on-line chatrooms to explore issues of identity and perception in the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender community.
• A. Lavelle Porter (History) and Kidada E. Williams (History) will partner with the African American Cultural and Historical Museum of Washtenaw County to research the Underground Railroad and the local African-American community during the mid-nineteenth century.

The mission of the Arts of Citizenship Program is to build bridges between the university and the community in the arts, humanities, and design. Arts of Citizenship coordinates a variety of programs:

• Community partnerships in which U-M faculty and students work with schools, cultural institutions, public agencies, and citizen groups.
• Experimental teaching that mixes rigorous study with practical projects.
• Support of innovative research and creative work for both academic and public audiences.
• Forums and visits by distinguished artists, intellectuals, and cultural advocates.

For further information about any of the projects of the Arts of Citizenship Program, call 734-615-0609; email the director, David Scobey (scobey@umich.edu); or see the website (www.artsofcitizenship.umich.edu).