Recently Detroit Summer took a road trip to New York to close out our exhibit at the Queens Museum of Art.

Take at look at some of the awesome events we experienced and what we gained from the trip.

To support our work or purchase our merchandise just go to the support us page or click the donate button

t-shirts at warp speed

To go along with our t-shirts the Detroit Summer youth wrote these pieces to explain the importance of the designs

school closing t-shirt

School Closings and the Education Crisis

By: Keeya Williams

The “school issues” t-shirt design was created to reflect the monetary and authoritative problems, and lack of creativity in the Detroit Public School system today. Dozens of schools have been closed or privatized. An Emergency Financial Manager has been put in charge of our public school system, taking away the city residents’ voting power over school related decisions. Many students have dropped out or left the district, because they feel the schools system is failing them. Our design is displaying these different problems through the the people, materials and supplies, and money being dumped out from the closing school building. The hands that are squeezing the building were used to show how people in the community (students, their friends and families)are being drained of all possible hope because of a compassion-less agenda. We, Detroit Summer, as advocates for peace and justice, believe that something empowering needs to be done! To start the movement, we have decided to first expose the school issues to the youth through building relationships and conducting interviews. Next, we designed a t-shirt to illustrate injustices to those impacted most by the Detroit Public School system. Showing them that things may look bad, but it is important to ”Find the beauty in what’s left” by creating the education we want to see.

youth self image t-shirt

Youth Self Image

By: Damoni Carter

Mainstream media portrays Detroit youth as unruly and destructive. As a result, most people don’t believe that Detroit youth are doing positive things, including youth who end up with a negative self-perception because of these media images. That’s why it is important to uplift and encourage today’s youth,and give us the confidence we need to be better “cityzens” of Detroit. Organizations like Detroit Summer, Ruth Ellis, Young Nation, Rosa Parks Youth Program, Capuchin Earth Works, Detroit Asian Youth Project, EMEAC, Vanguard, 5E/Heru, Real Media, Detroit Impact, Michigan Roundtable, and Feedom Freedom, are not only building up better youth self image but also building healthier communities in Detroit. All of these youth organizations have been interviewed about the media images and self image of youth in Detroit, both how they perceive it and how they want to change it. On this T-shirt, the glasses represent how people may view Detroit through a negative lens. The images of group interviews, screen-printing, and gardening represent what is actually being done in the city by youth. We believe that by changing the way Detroit youth see ourselves, we can help change the image of the city as a whole.

environmental justice t-shirts

Environmental Justice

By: Ashley Lee

Environmental injustice is a huge problem in Detroit today. Detroit has an environmental justice movement which shows us that if we don’t start respecting our environment and communities, we will destroy our world. Detroit is one of the most polluted cities in the country as a result of many factors, including being the home to one of the world’s largest incinerators, having thousands of trucks cross the US Canada border every day, and decades of industrial waste. More and more people are recycling, but recycling is not the only way we can help save the environment. We can create better solutions in our neighborhoods by planting gardens to provide healthy food for ourselves, consuming less, and fighting for cleaner air and water. This t-shirt design features dandelion seeds blowing toward the brain tree, to show how we are implanting a new way of thinking. The trees symbolizes the strong roots our city has grown and nurtured into the earth. The words “In our city we grow” were used to show how we nourish hope, justice, resilience, and strength. We believe that growing young minds and community is more important than growing industry.

Wes, damoni, and Keeya learning how to print

Last summer Detroit Summer LAMP youth developed a T-shirt campaign around three core issues: Youth Self-Image, School Closings, and Environmental Justice. They interviewed youth all over the city about these issues, particularly youth who work with the Detroit Future Youth Network, which is a partnership of 12 Detroit youth social justice and media organizations: Detroit Summer, Ruth Ellis, Young Nation, Rosa Parks Youth Program, Capuchin Earth Works, Detroit Asian Youth Project, EMEAC, Vanguard, 5E/Heru, Real Media, Detroit Impact, Michigan Roundtable, and Feedom Freedom.

The carter brothers @ an interview

Detroit Summer LAMP youth then collectively designed and printed shirts based on the images and ideas that arose in the interviews. These shirts were created with support from community artist-in-residence Wesley Taylor of Emergence Print Shop (EPS) and EmergenceMedia.org.

LAMP and real media post interview

Before the 2011 Allied Media Conference we held workshops to learn more about the three topics; Youth Self-Image, School Closings, and Environmental Justice and made questions to interview with. Throughout the summer, we interviewed each youth organization about each topic.   Through this process, community members became engaged in problem solving and building trusting relationships. After the interview process was completed the we youth edited and logged the audio and photos.  We used Photoshop to create designs around the three topics.

We premiered the shirts at our t-shirt party held at the end of the summer. We celebrated our success, sold t-shirts, and had live performances by City Wide poets, Detroit Summer youth, Detroit summer alumni Fowl, and Invincible were held down on the one’s and two’s by Dj Scari from 5e gallery. It was truly an awesome time!  Thanks to everyone who came out and supported.

We work to empower our youth to create their own media, tell their own stories, take ownership of the Internet & technology, think critically about the world,  creatively problem solve and document solutions.

check out this new recap of the Detroit Summer mural project from last year.

now appearing with our exhibit in the queens museum

After listening to interviews and with the guidance of Angelique Nixon we produced these three amazing pieces.

the beauty of what’s left…
By: Keeya Williams

the beauty of what’s left… a legacy.
a life.
a story.
a dream.
a dream to be portrayed into something more real.
finally a ranting a seal on what one would call a can that never ever closed.
we never deserved it and neither did you.
but what did you say when “who” chooses you!?
you were blamed but so was she and when you wake up in the morning you’ll be on tv.
we’re trying to discover & yet…
uncover the beauty of whats left!

accustomed they were to the life of the unlearned.
my dream school awaits me… it awaits my return.
the school where everything is relevant & I’m not just going for the hell of it!
I’m learning what was yearning from the start.
the feeling that i couldn’t yank from my heart.
were the teachers get me and get my thrill?
as well as understand when i just feel chill.
now I’m still sitting on this naked hill, still uncovering what we feel.
simply put “the beauty of what’s left”… of what is real!

now we can dance we can sing act out each scene.
each scene from our past that otherwise couldn’t be seen.
blooming in to our true selves rising from the ashes finally gaining our sashes.
our rewards for greatness & what we’ve became.
but please, please believe that we’re not done!
not yet done.. because the beauty of what’s left is still what we’ve won!

Environmental Justice
By: Ashley Lee, Damoni Carter, and Dakari Carter

Detroit is not a wasteland, not a land fill, filled with dirty ghetto people who don’t care about the earth man!
Detroit is not a ghost town, it’s a beautiful place with green space all around!
Detroit is the place for the next urban agricultural movement growing and nurturing gardens.

Green thinking and young minds
We got incinerators causing pollution  and Detroit youth organizations coming up with solutions
Earthworks and Feed’em Freedom  planting gardens on the east side
Detroit summer doing murals and t-shirts designs

True Colors Come Alive
By: Zena Addae

looking from a distance you see rundown buildings, vacant lots
stereotypes that could fit anyone
walking inside
staying for a night
seeing the true color come alive

the “D”, that’s what they call it
pride in their faces when they say it
I don’t understand what is so special-all of it is
gang banging and shoot outs
well, that’s what I hear

is it because your city brought you up like this?
this is the burbs of Detroit
stereotype all Detroiters

what you see on the outside is in no way what you would see if you took those magical medical tools used to cut people up and used them on me.  you would have to look deeper than blood and gore to see what really keeps me alive. the thought that you could think of me being a lesser person than you, just because of where I’m from, really makes me think.

maybe you can only find the bad in me because bad is all you can find in yourself.
yes, I’m from Detroit…and no, I’ve never been shot.
you might be surprised that I plan on going to college.

looking from a distance you see rundown buildings, vacant lots
stereotypes that could fit anyone
walking inside
staying for a night
seeing the true color come alive

Join Detroit Summer at our t-shirt party where we’ll showcase our t-shirts, auction our 2010 designs, and celebrate the end of the summer.

This summer we’ve been working on designing images around the topics of school issues, environmental justice and youth self image through interviews with all the organizations in the Detroit Future Youth Media Network.

enjoy live silk screening, performances, refreshments, and an auction of our giant prints from 2010, that were recently showcased at the Cass Cafe

T-shirts are selling at a sliding scale of $5-50

this is an all ages event

Saturday September 10 2pm-7pm

Furniture factory 4126 3rd St. Detroit, MI 48201

LAMP youth on stage giving thanks to partner groups

Thanks to everyone who came out and made the first Multi-Media Mural tour a great and amazing experince.

The tour, presentation, and performance we’re all phenomenal and it was truly a transformative day.

On tour at the Ruth Ellis Mural

hope to see everyone and a their mothers at events in the future.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Jon Blount | info@detroitsummer.org | 313-912-6736

October 1, 2010 – Youth from the Detroit Summer Live Arts Media Project will unveil three multimedia community murals in a tour and celebration event on Saturday, October 16th. The tour will depart from the Cass Corridor Neighborhood Development Corporation (CCNDC) at 3535 Cass Ave at 11:30 am. The post-tour celebration will begin at 2:30pm and end at 6:00pm. Please RSVP by emailing info@detroitsummer.org if you would like to participate in the tour.

Detroit Summer is multi-racial, inter-generational collective in Detroit that has been working to transform communities through youth leadership, creativity and collective action since 1992. The Live Arts Media Project (LAMP) of Detroit Summer is a youth-led response to Detroit’s drop-out crisis, which uses music, poetry, and visual art to investigate community problems and generate community-based solutions. The “Another Detroit is Happening” Multimedia Tour is Detroit Summer’s third Live Arts Media Project.

The “Another Detroit is Happening” Multimedia Tour is the culmination of a 6-month community art-investigation project, which launched in the months leading up to the 12th annual Allied Media Conference and the US Social Forum. In June of 2010, 12 youth set out to uncover the “other” Detroit that exists beneath the surface of dominant media narratives and to tell the stories of Detroiters who have been steadfastly building another world at the grassroots for decades. They used digital audio recorders and still cameras to interview and photograph 12 community organizations throughout the city. During the Allied Media Conference, they worked with muralists from around the country to create collages from their photographs and then transfer those collages onto giant silk screens. During the US Social Forum, they created hundreds of prints and worked with youth organizers from Seattle, Boston, New York and Chicago, as well as with local youth organizations to paint and wheat paste the prints around the city.

“We at LAMP believe Detroit needs the imagination and energy of young people in order to become the city we all want to see, not treated like criminals, patronized with tokenizing leadership roles, or programmed to believe that you have to leave Detroit if you want to have a good life.” — Starlet Lee, Detroit Summer Coordinator

Since the conclusion of the summer intensive, LAMP youth have been editing the audio footage from their interviews into sound collages, and creating their own hip hop and poetry inspired by the ideas in the interviews. They will encode the audio tracks into a series of phone numbers that will be posted alongside the murals at the three mural sites so that any passerby can call the phone number and listen to the stories contained within each mural.

“This is one of the most innovative community art projects I’ve been a part of. As a visiting artist, it was humbling for me to realize that there is so much innovation that is growing organically here in Detroit; it’s not something that Detroiters need to import. And when artists do decide to come to Detroit, it’s important that they take time to understand the incredible work of organizations like Detroit Summer and think about what they can do to support it.” — Juan Martinez, The Beehive Design Collective

The tour and unveiling celebration will provide an opportunity to learn more about the work of Detroit Summer, as well as the work of all the participating organizations in the “Another Detroit is Happening” mural project. These include: the Boggs Center to Nurture Community Leadership, the Food Justice Task Force, the Digital Justice Coalition, Allied Media Projects, the Ruth Ellis Center, Centro Obrero, the Detroit Coalition Against Police Brutality, Nandi’s Knowledge Cafe, the PG Institute, COMPAS, Blue Babies, 5e Gallery, American Indian Health and Family Services, and Yusef Shakur’s Urban Network. Prints of the murals will be available for sale. All proceeds will benefit Detroit Summer.