Edition No. 61
Arts and Culture
The DIA's 85th Annual Detroit Public Schools Community District Student Exhibition is online and in-person.
Community and Family
Detroit Dirt’s composting site near downtown Detroit is producing rich, healthy soil for local farms, backyard gardeners, and community gardens.
American Democracy
“In many residential suburbs, things look almost normal. But in the deserted downtowns, it feels as though you’d stumbled upon the cemetery where nondescript office towers go to die.”
85th Annual Detroit Public Schools Community District (DPSCD) Student Exhibition
The Detroit Institute of Arts’ 85th Annual Detroit Public Schools Community District Student Exhibition is online and in-person.
This annual exhibition is the longest standing continuous relationship the DIA has with an educational organization and features imaginative works created by Detroit Public Schools Community District (DPSCD) students in grades K-12, ranging from paintings, prints, drawings, photography, ceramics, videos, jewelry, and more.
The exhibition is on view on the first floor in the Wayne and Joan Webber Education Wing and is free with museum admission.
The 85th Detroit Public Schools Community District Student Exhibition is organized by the Detroit Institute of Arts and the Detroit Public Schools Community District. This exhibition is made possible by the generous support of the Ruth T.T. Cattell Education Endowment Fund.
Detroit Dirt: Creating a Zero-Waste Mindset
Pashon Murray could be called a next-generation Rachel Carson—fearless, outspoken, and willing to take on the big boys. Murray saw that food waste had become an epidemic—a 2020 estimate in the American Journal of Agricultural Economics valued food waste by U.S. consumers at $240 billion a year—and that was a driving factor in developing Detroit Dirt, her full-circle composting company.
Detroit Dirt’s mission is to push forward a low-carbon economy by way of organic waste diversion. Murray designed a closed-loop system that treats waste as a resource, saving 50 to 70 tons of renewable waste annually from entering landfills and instead turning it into fertile compost.
Detroit Dirt’s composting site near downtown Detroit is producing rich, healthy soil for local farms, backyard gardeners, and community gardens, and before the COVID-19 pandemic, demand for Murray’s delicious dirt grew daily.
“Cities aren’t facing up to their ‘long covid’ crisis: Downtown is in deep trouble”
Washington Post, February 13, 2022
Each day there seems to be more discussion of what life will be like “post-COVID.” Earlier this week, the Washington Post’s Megan McArdle joined that discussion with an article about the pandemic’s current and possible future impact on America’s downtowns.
The McArdle piece is of special relevance here in Detroit. Pre-pandemic, we had a resurgent downtown after many difficult years. What will happen now? Will Detroit simply go back onto the positive trajectory of the past dozen or so years? Or, has the pandemic altered the nature or pace of how Detroit downtown development will unfold over the next several years? The McArdle article gives readers some good tools for thinking about such questions and is available at the link below.
Inspired Thoughts is a collection of highly curated content that embraces the spirit and purpose of The War Memorial: arts and culture, community enrichment, leadership, and patriotism.
Derived from the notion that learning from others is the key to success, Inspired Thoughts is meant to shine a light on those making a difference in the world around them. This collection features artists, poets, writers, architects, and every thought leader in-between. Inspired Thoughts is the strongest reflection of what The War Memorial stands for, and what we aim to be.
The content featured on Inspired Thoughts is curated by War Memorial leadership — we also look forward to featuring special guest curators in the near future. If you are interested in providing content for Inspired Thoughts, please email our Communications team at dmurphy@warmemorial.org.