Power House Productions will therefore establish the following future projects:
+ Neighborhood Bike Shop
Biking is a big past time as well as a major source of transit for neighborhood residents, but the nearest bike shop is 15 miles away. The Neighborhood Bike Shop would be used as a training program for teenagers and young adults to gain experience in bicycle maintenance and basic retail business skills. It will also serve as a gathering place for bicycle enthusiasts within the community and beyond, providing bike rentals for neighborhood residents and visiting artists alike. The Bike Shop will also act as a point of information to obtain City maps and Power House Publications including guidebooks and positive marketing materials designed and produced within the Power House Neighborhood.
+ Recreation development -- Skate Parks, Bike Courses
The kids in the neighborhood often cause trouble, whether it is smashing out windows of vacant houses or more serious crimes, it is primarily a result of being bored. We are working with several skateboard companies and skatepark builders in understanding what it would take to establish a small skatepark in the neighborhood. The skateboard industry has been more than helpful and enthusiastic in planning this venture. We are aiming to break ground Summer 2010. Currently, we are negotiating the purchase of City-owned vacant lots in the neighborhood and will work cooperatively with the City Planning Department in finalizing site selection.
+ Citywide tours
For many years, Detroit has been the place people loved to hate. Recently, however, it has become a place where more and more visitors are fascinated and intrigued by and why not -- it is an interesting city indeed with an amazing history. We have informally provided city tours to interested
parties for over 5 years now and are looking to establish a city tourism business as a new micro-industry for the community. The neighborhood is home to a large population of cab drivers and experienced city dwellers who could serve as the basis for a formal city tour service. This could be educational for both residents and non residents alike.
+ Reworking and rezoning of alleyways
The outdated alley infrastructure is often a site for crime, from illegal dumping to violent assaults the alleys are used as brothels and unseen routes for breaking and entering. The alleys are a problem; however, there are positive aspects to the alley structure as well including gardening and play space. Children play in the alleys because there are few other nearby open spaces for recreation. Our proposal is to redesign the alleys so they harness the positive aspects of these throughways, closing them to automobile traffic which is already minimal and creating skateboard & bike paths, cross country skiing routes, extending backyard gardens and establishing local shops in under utilized garage structures. This will require coordination with the city, local utilities and neighbors alike in this transformation.
+ Renewable energy projects and workshops / job training
With the Power House as the lead example, we work with residents to educate and promote power sustainability and efficiency at the scale of individual houses. We also experiment with older Detroit homes as labs – sites for design and energy production. The goal is to find ways to more
efficiently and economically power small, urban homes and using existing housing stock in a way that could be repeated throughout the city of Detroit and beyond.
+ Infrastructure rethinking workshops
One of the problems plaguing this city is an aging infrastructure and increasingly limited resources to address it. In this particular neighborhood most water, sewerage and electrical systems are approaching 100 years old. One solution to this problem is to rethink the overall system and experiment with localized, small networks such as water collection, composting toilets, DC electrical lighting and appliances, and off-the-grid solar and wind powered homes. This plays into the concept of utilizing neighborhood houses as laboratories for creating a new models of retrofitting these houses, developing new strategies or even a kit-of-parts that can be implemented in other houses whether that be in the Power House neighborhood or elsewhere.
+ Formalized artist residencies and workshops
For the four years we have been living in this community, we have had numerous well-known artists, performers, filmmakers, musicians, curators and writers stay with us and spend time in the neighborhood on an informal basis. Many have returned to help with projects and in Spring of 2009 we hosted 10 international Masters students from the Dutch Art Institute. With the formation of Power House Productions, we will create a formal, community-driven, artist in residency program focussed on social engagement and public art. The intention is to bring in creative talent for short and long periods (one month to six months) for collaborative art projects, performances, readings and other proposed work. This will create a neighborhood tied to the global arts community as well as the world economy and culture, which in turn will enrich the lives of neighborhood residents through arts education, exposure, and collaborative partnerships.
+ Power House art gallery and experimental sound studio
While the Power House will act as a live/work space for visiting artists, it also serves as a small art gallery in which the artists and community members will exhibit work. Along with an emphasis on visual arts, new forms of sound art and communication arts will also be sought out in making residency selections and in design of the gallery space. Such work may include, but not be limited to, live local radio broadcasts, performances, film, video and multimedia productions. These projects would be public in nature, presented to a wide and diverse audience, and meant to have community members as participants in addition to being audience members in addition to being audience members.