Are alleys the hot new development frontier in Detroit? Midtown's got its
Green Alley and now The Alley Project Gallery is set to bring an art alley to Southwest Detroit. The project is spearheaded by Young Nation, a nonprofit that works to channel youth energy in a positive direction via their natural interest in aerosol art, low-rider bikes and media.
The TAP gallery concept grew out of kids painting garages -- with owner permission -- in an alley between Avis and Falcon near Woodmere Cemetery. The increasing popularity inspired Young Nation co-founder Erik Howard to formalize and organize the process. He applied for and was awarded a $38,000
Community+Public Arts grant that will fund a garage becoming a gallery, two vacant residential lots being enclosed and outfitted with work surfaces and the installation of three bike racks.
This first phase should be completed by summer of 2011; future phases call for the project to extend to two neighborhood parks, Weiss and Springdale Green, both of which have been improved and are maintained by program partner
Urban Neighborhood Initiatives.
Graig Donnelly, a board member of Young Nation, says TAP Gallery will ultimately be "a safe place for young people in the neighborhood to practice and learn about the art they are studying," which is, in this case, graffiti. To detractors of the art form who might question the wisdom of training youth in the medium he says, "This is actually fighting the graffiti problem head-on by teaching them the value of taking something they are passionate about and using it as a means of positive personal development -- taking it out of the realm of destructive and illegal and ... putting it into a positive context."
Other project partners include 555 Gallery and Studios, Southwest Custom Bikes, University of Detroit Mercy: School of Architecture and Detroit Collaborative Design Center, and All Saints Neighborhood Center.
Source: Graig Donnelly, Young Nation
Writer: Kelli B. Kavanaugh
Enjoy this story?
Sign up for free solutions-based reporting in your inbox each week.