ArtsCorpsDetroit

Mid-American Session Proposal Community and Collaboration ArtsCorpsDetroit Creative industries provide direct economic benefits to communities by creating jobs, attracting investments, generating tax revenues, and stimulating local economies through tourism and consumer purchases. These industries provide an array of other benefits, such as infusing other industries with creative insight for their products and services and preparing workers to participate in the contemporary workforce. Because arts and culture enhance quality of life, they are an important complement to community development, enriching local amenities and attracting young professionals to an area. To ensure the long-term vitality of the cultural sector, urban areas such as metropolitan Detroit must develop and nurture programs that leverage human creative capital. Typically the arts have been defended on the basis of their economic impact on communities and on quality of life factors in terms of attracting people and businesses to arts-rich communities. A crucial factor, often overlooked, is the intrinsic transformative value of arts engagement in widening people\u27s view of creativity, action and engagement. In the proposed session ArtsCorpsDetroit will discuss strategies for building effective community partnerships to leverage human creative capital. Facilitated by ArtsCorpsDetroit, an initiative of Wayne State University and Tech Town, participants will hear from three differing perspectives, 1. higher education faculty members, 2. community partners, and 3. students who have engaged (collaboratively) on arts based community projects. Panelists will discuss the obstacles and benefits of “community and collaboration”. ArtsCorpsDetroit also will provide a bus tour of panelists’ projects to show Community and Collaboration “at-work”