Brightmoor Maker Space Featured in Xconomy

Stamps Professor Nick Tobier and the Brightmoor Maker Space are featured in a new Xconomy article about U‑M’s Detroit research collaborations. 

The Brightmoor Maker Space, supported by U‑M’s Penny Stamps School of Art and Design as well as the Knight Foundation, is another major collaboration the university has underway in the city. Located in a rebounding neighborhood in an isolated section of northwestern Detroit, the repurposed property offers art and design workshops, 3D printing, woodworking, entrepreneurial programming, and more. (This week, the maker space taught kids how to make their own kites.)

Nick Tobier, a U‑M professor who helps run the Brightmoor Maker Space, just returned from an exchange trip to Fukushima, Japan, where a maker space called the Ishinomaki Lab has sprung up from the wreckage of the 2011 nuclear disaster there. Tobier went to Japan to trade urban DIY best practices with the folks at Ishinomaki — the kind of collaboration that Holloway describes as one of the most important outcomes of the university’s work in Detroit.

“It’s a chance for partners to discover each other and learn from each other,” he adds.

U‑M Steps Up Pace, Breadth of Detroit Research Collaborations | Xconomy