Nick Tobier and Brightmoor Maker Space Featured for “This is Michigan”

Stamps Professor Nick Tobier is featured as part of U‑M’s ​“This is Michigan” campaign for his work with Detroit Community Schools to co-create the Brightmoor Maker Space with collaborator Bart Eddy.

The Brightmoor Maker Space is a 3,200 square-foot building on the campus of Detroit Community Schools that is resourced to help students to learn, share knowledge, and build entrepreneurial skills around the act of making. After years of working in spaces in the school and across the neighborhood, the Brightmoor Maker Space began operating in a permanent workspace about a year ago. It came to fruition after a crowdfunding campaign to renovate an abandoned 3,200-square-foot warehouse. Donations of equipment and tools from businesses and other supporters outfitted it to do all kinds of work and projects. 

The outcome of a decade-long partnership between DCS, the Sunbridge International Collaborative, and the Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design at the University of Michigan, the maker space is the brainchild of Tobier and Mr. Bart Eddy. Through Tobier’s Change by Design class, Stamps students and DCS high school students work together to create social impact through design and entrepreneurship. 

Diallo Carr finds the same spirit of support at the makerspace, which he calls his office and place where he innovates. If not for Brightmoor, where he learned screenprinting after also discovering a passion for woodworking, he would not have launched his clothing line, Ordinary, nearly two years ago.

Brightmoor is ​“where it begins. This is the place to come and expand your ideas,” he said.

Making their way: Brightmoor Maker Space builds businesses, confidence, community | news​.umich​.edu