Detroit Is Not “Urban Wasteland”
My art is a medicine for the community. You can’t heal the land until you heal the minds of the people.
-Tyree Guyton
Despite classifications of Detroit as an ‘urban wasteland’, I can’t help but disagree.
Maybe it’s blindness, optimism or stupidity but the concept of a city becoming a wasteland while people live there confounds me.
Nevertheless, countless articles refer to Detroit as a shadow of it’s former self. A dead zone. This past week, over 9,000 properties were auctioned off by the city – with many not even being picked up.
However, a wasteland is dead. Detroit is not. Against the odds, there remains an energy in the city. The picture above is from The Heidelberg Project: a street filled with vacant houses that were decorated into a large art project by those in the neighborhood. Tyree Guyton and his family, seeing the city ravaged by the Detroit riots in 1986, Guyton transformed the ravaged street into a giant art installation: one that is just as important almost 25 years later.
Check it below:
Tyree Guyton and The Heidelberg Project remain an incredible inspiration for our hard hit times. By transforming the landscape, Guyton has pushed the greater public to get involved and invest their time and effort in neighborhoods that are the hardest hit. But I can let the folks at the Heidelberg Project tell you about that in their own words:
“The Heidelberg Project offers a forum for ideas, a seed of hope, and a bright vision for the future. It’s about taking a stand to save forgotten neighborhoods. It’s about helping people think outside the box and it’s about offering solutions. It’s about healing communities through art – and it’s working!”
