• Arts of Citizenship and Matrix Theatre Company Win the 2004 Imagining Michigan Award
• Arts of Citizenship Director David Scobey Wins Diversity Service Award
• Arts of Citizenship Faculty Associate Janie Paul Wins Service Learning Award
• Arts of Citizenship Wins 2004 Great Lakes Community Arts Award
• Matrix Theatre Company Recognized
• Radio Documentary about 1967 Riots Wins Award
• Award of Merit in Education from Historical Society of Michigan

Arts of Citizenship and Matrix Theatre Company Win the 2004 Imagining Michigan Award

The State of Michigan's Department of History, Arts, and Libaries and the national consortium organization Imagining America have presented the 2004 Imagining Michigan award to the University of Michigan Arts of Citizenship Program and to the Matrix Theatre Company of Detroit. The Imagining Michigan award recognizes the collaboration of the two organizations as the best university-community partnership in a statewide competition. Arts of Citizenship and Matrix joined together for a multi-year project called Homelands, in which the oral history of the ethnically diverse southwest neighborhood of Detroit was crafted into a stage presentation with playwright Wes Nethercott. Other components of Homelands were an exhibit of historic photographs centered on the Michigan Central Railroad Station in Detroit and a sourcebook documenting the partnership so that other groups can learn how to work together to create valuable cultural products. Governer Jennifer Granholm announced the award from the steps of the state Capitol on May 12, as part of the celebrations of Michigan Week. William Anderson (HAL) and Julie Ellison (Imagining America) presented the award to David Scobey (Arts of Citizenship) and Shaun Nethercott (Matrix Theatre) at the Imagining MIchigan conference in Grand Rapids on May 24. The members of the Selection Committee for the Imagining Michigan Award exemplify the collaborative spirit and statewide reach of the award. Diether Haenicke, President Emeritus of Western Michigan University, served as Chair of the Committee. The Committee Members were Laura Berman, a columnist at the Detroit News; Frank Marczak, the President of Muskegon Community College; and Gloria Coles, the Director of the Flint Public Library. For more information, see www.ia.umich.edu.

Arts of Citizenship Director David Scobey Wins Diversity Service Award

David Scobey was among five faculty members at the University of Michigan who have been named winners of the 2004 Harold R. Johnson Diversity Service Award. Established in 1996, this award recognizes faculty for their commitment to the development of a more culturally and ethnically diverse campus community. Scobey will be officially presented with the award in a ceremony on May 12, 2004. For further information, please read this article in the University Record.

Arts of Citizenship Faculty Associate Janie Paul Wins Service Learning Award

Janie Paul, assistant professor in the University of Michigan School of Art and Design, has received a 2003 Michigan Campus Compact Award for outstanding work in community service learning. Prof. Paul has long been affiliated with Arts of Citizenship through the Detroit Connections project, which brings afterschool art-across-the-curriculum workshops to resource-poor elementary schools in Detroit. She has also worked extensively with the Prison Creative Arts Project, facilitating art, writing, and theater workshops in Michigan correctional facilities and juvenile centers. Congratulations!

Arts of Citizenship Wins 2004 Great Lakes Community Arts Award

The Arts of Citizenship Program at the University of Michigan has been selected by the Michigan Association of Community Arts Agencies (MACAA) as a recipient of a 2004 Great Lakes Community Arts Award. MACAA announced the winners of this year's awards at its annual meeting on March 19 at the Michigan State University Museum in East Lansing. Formal presentation of Arts of Citizenship's award, an original work of art by Michigan artist Nancy Lautenbach, will take place at 4:00 pm on April 26 at the Work Gallery, 306 South State Street, in Ann Arbor. The presentation ceremony will be open to the public.

David Scobey, Director of Arts of Citizenship, in thanking MACAA, noted, "This award is especially meaningful because it comes from the very arts organizations with whom we collaborate on arts and education projects. It means a lot to us to have the value of our work affirmed by community partners." The Great Lakes Community Arts Awards are presented to arts organizations that are outstanding in management and programming, community and economic development, and leadership. All winners must demonstrate a commitment to integrating arts and culture into community life.

The Arts of Citizenship Program links University of Michigan research and teaching in the arts, the humanities, and design to the community through innovative cultural partnerships with schools, museums, libraries, arts organizations, public agencies, and grassroots groups. The program encourages experimental teaching in which university students combine rigorous study with practical projects that contribute to community life and to active citizenship. Arts of Citizenship is being honored with a Great Lakes Community Arts Award for project partnerships that have included

• theatre pieces created from local oral histories (with Mosaic Youth Theatre and Matrix Theatre Company, both in Detroit)
• afterschool art-across-the-curriculum workshops in Detroit elementary schools (with Communities in Schools)
• a two-year performance partnership exploring social issues in southeast Michigan through dance (with Liz Lerman Dance Exchange, University Musical Society, and many community dance troupes)
• a website of design proposals for public art and cultural amenities in a historic park (with the City of Ann Arbor and park neighbors)
• radio documentaries on topics such as jazz in Detroit and the Arab-American teen experience (with Michigan Radio and several community groups)
• multi-arts playshops to improve the literacy of homeless children in Washtenaw County (with SOS Community Services)

MACAA exists to support, strengthen, and unite arts and cultural organizations throughout Michigan. Programs and resources of MACAA are described at www.macaa.com. The other winners of the 2004 Great Lakes Community Arts Award are the Dowagiac Dogwood Fine Arts Festival (Dowagiac), the Michigan Legacy Art Park (Thompsonville), the Old Town Business and Art Development Association (Lansing), and the Original Dulcimer Players Club (Evart).

See also this article from the Unviersity Record.

Matrix Theatre Company Recognized

The Matrix Theatre Company of Detroit has been named 2004 Outstanding Community Partner by the University of Michigan Ginsberg Center for Community Service and Learning. Arts of Citizenship, which nominated Matrix for the Homelands Project in local history and theater, sends hearty congratulations!

Radio Documentary about 1967 Detroit Riots Wins Award

The Michigan Association of Broadcasters has chosen "The Riot Diaries: Coming of Age During the Riot Years" for a Merit Award in the Mini-Documentary/Series category. "The Riot Diaries," a two-part documentary that aired on Michigan Radio on July 23 and 24, 2001, featured interviews with two women who were teenagers in the Detroit area during the riots that occurred in July 1967. The programs were a collaborative project of Michigan Radio and the Arts of Citizenship Program at the University of Michigan (UM).

At Michigan Radio, Senior Producer Tamar Charney was in charge of the project, with assistance from Alison Zatorski and Jim Deal. University of Michigan undergraduate students in the Arts of Citizenship course "Community Projects in the Arts and Humanities" conducted interviews and drafted the preliminary script. UM Associate Professor David M. Scobey supervised Lindsey Gray, Leah Nickel, Viticia Thames, and Stacy Tiderington in this work. Tamar Charney provided training in interviewing and scriptwriting.

In the first segment of "The Riot Diaries," Patricia Hatcher, now a teacher at Detroit's Cooley High School, describes what it was like when the riots erupted on a hot summer night in 1967 after a police raid on an after-hours bar on 12th Street. She talks about the deployment of the National Guard to quell violence, as well as the aftermath of the riots for the African American community.

In the second part of "The Riot Diaries," Carol Boyd, now a professor of nursing at the University of Michigan, talks about the differences in white attitudes before and after the riots and about "white flight" from urban areas of Detroit. Boyd, who attended high school in Ferndale in 1967, describes herself as a "rabble-rouser," who got into trouble as a white person sympathetic to African American causes. Music and news clips from the period complement the oral histories that the two women offer.

When the documentaries aired, listeners were invited to share their own memories of the riots through the Michigan Radio website, www.michiganradio.org. Many people sent stories, which are now being compiled by another student team.

Funding for "The Riot Diaries" was provided by grants from the UM Whitaker Fund for the Improvement of Teaching, the Michigan Council for Arts and Cultural Affairs, and the Michigan Humanities Council. Arts of Citizenship and Michigan Radio are currently finishing another documentary collaboration-a history of the teaching of jazz in Detroit in the 1950s and 1960s. This program, again involving UM students in telling important community stories, will be broadcast in spring 2002.

The UM Arts of Citizenship Program, directed by Scobey, builds bridges between the university and the community through the arts, the humanities, and design. Arts of Citizenship's partnerships with community groups enrich public life through the co-creation of cultural resources such as exhibits, websites, K-12 curricula, public art, documentaries, and performance pieces. At the same time, the projects aim at stimulating innovative forms of university-based scholarship, teaching, and creative work.

Michigan Radio, public radio at the University of Michigan, serves the state through FM stations WUOM Ann Arbor/Detroit (91.7), WVGR Grand Rapids (104.1), and WFUM Flint (91.1). Michigan Radio garnered a total of six awards in the 2002 Broadcast Excellence competition, including ones in the Mini-Documentary, Hard News, Feature, and Special Interest Programming categories. The awards will be officially presented in Lansing on February 19, 2002.

David Scobey and Arts of Citizenship Program Receive 2001 Award of Merit in Education from Historical Society of Michigan

In an award ceremony at Wayne State University on October 5, 2001, the Historical Society of Michigan presented its 2001 Award of Merit in Education to David Scobey, Associate Professor of Architecture and Director of the Arts of Citizenship Program at the University of Michigan. Scobey and his collaborators were recognized for their “remarkable work with the Students on Site project and the Arts of Citizenship Program.” Students on Site, a local history project of the Arts of Citizenship Program, partners University of Michigan faculty and students with teachers and students from the Ann Arbor Public Schools.

In presenting the award, Prof. John Revitte of Michigan State University spoke for the Historical Society: “Scobey worked with . . . the Students on Site project to create varied and exciting opportunities for area schoolchildren to actively learn and enjoy local and state history through classroom study, guided bus tours, and an exciting new website. The excellent website offers an online archive of documents, photographs, audio recordings, and teacher lesson plans about Ann Arbor and regional history. The project has engaged hundreds of elementary schoolchildren yearly through its classes and tours, and countless other students and teachers have been reached via its website.”

For 2001, the Arts of Citizenship Program was the sole recipient of the Award of Merit in Education. The Program was nominated by Linda Prieskorn, the Social Studies Coordinator for the Ann Arbor Public Schools, who has been an active collaborator on the Students on Site project.

The Arts of Citizenship Program links University of Michigan research and teaching in the arts, the humanities, and design to the community through innovative cultural partnerships with schools, museums, libraries, arts organizations, public agencies, and grassroots groups. Arts of Citizenship encourages experimental teaching in which students combine rigorous study with practical projects that contribute to community life and to active citizenship.