Arts and Cultural Organizing.

Inside Southwest Detroit engages the arts and cultural practices, spiritual traditions, and our collective imagination to create new ways of being rooted in collective care and decision making.

The Highland Center for Education and Research tells us that “cultural organizing works to amplify access in all spaces.”

Blessing of The Lowriders

In 1998 Victor Villalobos created the Blessing of The Lowriders as an intersection of culture, faith, and community—and a celebration of youth and their creativity. After a several-year hiatus Young Nation approached Victor, offering support and organization in reinstating the event. The Blessing has since become an official program of Inside Southwest Detroit, framing and supporting Victor’s and Young Nation's annual collaboration.  

Each year Inside Southwest Detroit, Uso, GoodTimes, and Majestics Car Clubs, Motor City Street Dance Academy, and Grace In Action come together to bless the cars, the culture, and a community of lowriders.

The Blessing celebrates dimensions of culture found in the cars, music, dance, food and the visual arts with vendors, artists and performers from the neighborhood. The Blessing brings together residents past and present so they re-connect with each, the neighborhood, and the cars and culture they love.  

The Porch On TAP

The Porch On TAP brings five local, regional and national artists from multiple disciplines annually to our Southwest Detroit neighborhood for short term artist residencies. The project transforms the Porch (at 8869 Avis and the Outdoor Classroom), a traditional greeting and gathering space in urban neighborhoods, into a setting for artistic exchange and development of artistic networks. It is a place where neighbors gather to deepen understanding of themselves, each other and access the world.

In each residency, artists engage with neighborhood residents and share their work and ideas with the neighborhood through conversations, teaching, performances and exhibitions. Their residency inspires residents of our neighborhood to create their own artistic products that explore identity, community, culture and relationships

Noche de Recuerdos Annual Gathering

Our annual event (formerly Angel’s Night Event) was initiated in 2012 to create a safe space where youth and adults can gather, sharing time and place, without fear of criminalization on Angel’s Night when a city-wide curfew put youth in the neighborhood at increased risk of interaction with law enforcement. The city recently retired its Angel’s Night initiatives, including the city-wide curfew.

Over time our gathering has evolved into a creative expression of coming together and storytelling in the days around Halloween, All Saints Day, and Dia de Los Muertos to collectively remember— that we are grateful for those who came before us, that we are a community and need each other, and that we keep us safe.

Blackbook Sessions

Blackbook sessions are a time to come together with fellow artists to support each other by sharing skills, utensils, and tips. The sessions can be led by a guest artist or as a collaborative artistic conversation between participants. It is also an opportunity to create and display artwork in a peer-reviewed setting.

A blackbook is a sketchbook and journal of concept that becomes a dynamic collection of relationships and artists that the owner has come in contact with or been influenced by. Blackbook sessions celebrate the sharing and mentoring aspects of the culture and advance artistic practice.