The University of Michigan’s Arts Initiative has announced its Arts Initiative Project Support grants for fall 2024, funding six innovative projects across the university.
The awards to UM-Flint, Institute for the Humanities, School of Social Work, School for Environment and Sustainability, Digital Studies Institute and the Lieberthal-Rogel Center for Chinese Studies will support activities to enhance access to the arts, foster interdisciplinary collaboration and engage campus communities in creative learning experiences.
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The AIPS program offers grants of up to $10,000 with an additional $5,000 for projects incorporating visiting artists. Initiatives range from performances and exhibitions to collaborative projects that integrate the arts with academic units outside of traditional art disciplines.
This cycle’s funding will provide significant opportunities to explore how the arts can intersect with fields such as environmental science, social work, and digital technologies and culture.
Arts for the Environment
This project will transform the Art & Environment Gallery in the Dana Building, which houses SEAS, into a vibrant space for exhibits, performances and presentations that demonstrate the powerful role the arts can play in promoting environmental stewardship.
Sara Adlerstein-Gonzalez, an associate research scientist in environment and sustainability at SEAS, aims to integrate arts practices with environmental science to offer new perspectives on sustainability.
The project seeks to engage students, faculty and staff from academic units such as SEAS, the College of Engineering and the School of Music, Theatre & Dance to explore how the arts can enhance research and teaching in environmental science.
Another key campus partner is the ArtEco Collective, a Rackham Interdisciplinary Workshop that brings together students from various disciplines who are passionate about the intersection of art and environmental studies.
Today Is Yesterday’s Tomorrow
This is an interdisciplinary art exhibition and lecture series hosted by Riverbank Arts at UM-Flint that features artists working to build a sustainable, just and equitable future through speculative art and design.
The exhibition draws on a range of creative practices and incorporates contributions from UM-Flint students, faculty and the Flint community.
Featured artists include Elijah Wray, Errin Whitaker, Eugene Blackwell, Kesswa, Mathew Osmon, Reuben Telushkin, Rob Carter, Terra Lockhart and Tunde Olaniran. It is led by Will Langford, program manager of the Riverbank Arts Gallery at UM-Flint and an intermittent lecturer in education studies at the Marsal Family School of Education.
“The Central Park Five” opera
A unique collaboration between the Detroit Opera and the School of Social Work, this project will engage students in the upcoming performance of composer Anthony Davis’s Pulitzer Prize-winning opera, “The Central Park Five,” which tells the true story of five teenagers who were arrested and wrongfully convicted of an assault in New York’s Central Park in 1989.
Students will explore themes of systemic injustice, identify ethical violations and use the arts as a tool for advocacy. By engaging with the opera and its themes, students will deepen their understanding of social issues while actively contributing to a larger conversation about racial justice and equity.
Led by Katie Richards-Schuster, associate professor of social work in the School of Social Work, the project aims to create interdisciplinary connections between opera, social work and the legal system.
Making Art Public
The Institute for the Humanities in partnership with faculty from the Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design will create a mobile artwork that connects the university to communities across the state.
The project includes collaborators at Michigan State University along with visiting author and American writer Leah Johnson. The enhanced van will carry U-M students across the state to enhance visibility of artists and student projects.
The project is led by Shaunda Bunton, assistant director of public programming and engagement in LSA’s Institute for the Humanities.
8-Bit music exhibit
A celebration of 8-bit music features a weeklong exhibition that will include interactive stations with archival objects from the Computer Video Game Archive.
The community can also go deeper with early video game music through open workshops and class interactions by visiting chiptune artist Norra Decks, who also will perform a live concert.
The project is led by Toni Bushner, lecturer IV and adviser in the Digital Studies Institute.
Kunqu and its operatic performance of Chinese gender norms and resistance
Scheduled for March 2025, this innovative project will bring Kunqu, a UNESCO-recognized Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Mankind, to U-M as both a performance and a lens through which to examine Chinese gender norms and their resistance.
This weeklong event will engage more than a hundred U-M students and faculty members from multiple disciplines, including participants from the School of Music, Theatre & Dance, LSA’s Department of Asian Languages and Cultures and Department of Musicology, and the Michigan Institute for Research in Chinese Studies, as well as students from other universities such as Ohio State University, Northwestern University and the University of Chicago.
Led by Joseph S. C. Lam, professor of musicology in SMTD, this project will culminate in a public performance of four short, representative Kunqu plays: “The Nun Who Yearns for Martial Bliss (‘Sifan’),” “The Palace Maid Who Kills an Illegitimate General (‘Cihu’),” “The Commander Who Cries (‘Yeben’),” and “The Stalwart Drunkard-Monk Who Shatters the Temple Gate (‘Shanmen’).”
“The University of Michigan boasts an incredible range of artists, thinkers and doers who have the energy and commitment to make magical things happen,” said Mark Clague, executive director of the Arts Initiative.
“In such a creative campus, the Arts Initiative serves as the motivating spark to set the wonder and possibilities of the arts in motion. It’s exciting to see such fantastic projects as a result. They enrich not only the university’s teaching, research and service mission, but make our community more joyful, supportive and thoughtful.”
