Announcing our 2023-24 Flourish Fund recipients

Womxnhouse launches its third-year artist residency program, dedicated to empowering women artists. This initiative provides a nurturing environment and vital resources for artists and curators, focusing on cultivating dynamic cultural experiences in Detroit’s Northwest community. By harnessing art's healing potential, Womxnhouse Residency fosters the creative growth of women, offering dedicated creation space and access to Norwest Gallery of Art’s facilities and network. It also encourages community involvement through a collaborative project, transforming a residential home into an interactive art installation. WOMXNHOUSE Detroit brings art and culture to underserved neighborhoods, championing diversity and community visibility.

Our upcoming project is the release of the twelfth issue of Barbed during the Winter/Spring season. This issue, titled "Intentionally Mindful," focuses on artists of color and those from the LGBTQ+ communities in Metro Detroit. Our theme centers around the importance of being mindful and true to ourselves as artists, without compromising our values or falling for trends.

“'Documenting Art for Artists'" is a comprehensive guidebook designed to offer artists a valuable resource for honing their documentation skills. Merging the principles of mentorship with a practical reference, this initiative aims to democratize access to pivotal documentation expertise, transcending traditional educational boundaries to serve independent artists universally.

Queer Ecologies Lab at Studio For Now is a series of workshops and events that bring together artists, community organizers and policymakers who are passionate about the global ecological crisis. Queer Ecologies Lab aims to facilitate cross-disciplinary relationships between artists and climate professionals in service of local and global multispecies flourishing. These events will take place at Studio For Now, a queer-led art studio in Detroit’s North End Neighborhood. Queer Ecologies Lab examines the complex ways that LGBTQ+ and all marginalized identities experiences are intertwined with environmental concerns and how these intersections can inform more meaningful approaches to sustainability.

Dope Women in Media: Honoring the Women of Film in Metro Detroit exhibition, taking place at the Ann Arbor Art Center as a part of the Ann Arbor Art Festival will recognize the women from the greater Detroit Area in film, video, photo and new media and their research, contribution and impact to contemporary art and popular culture. During this exhibit, scheduled for March 2024, emerging and seasoned artists and filmmakers will showcase work of audio, video, film and stills and attributing materials.

Creative Cargo is the repurposing of a cargo container—simultaneously both a mechanism and symbol of global capitalism—into a creative community hub. Feedom Freedom, the urban farm I co-founded to nourish my neighborhood and establish relationships of real sustainability, will partner with me and a group of artists/organizers to liberate cultural space. We operate with the understanding that creativity’s essential to imagining life beyond capitalism but, as rents rise and artists struggle to find spaces to create, we need to make an enduring space where culture can be created and shared within the community it was created for.