U-M Arts Initiative funds and connects arts programs inside and outside university

This story is part of a series about arts and culture in Washtenaw County. It is made possible by the Ann Arbor Art Center, the Ann Arbor Summer Festival, Destination Ann Arbor, Larry and Lucie Nisson, and the University Musical Society.

"I see the arts having [an] ambassadorial function, if you will – a diplomatic function – particularly in a world where we're all starting to live in our own silos in a certain way, or our own information bubbles," says Mark Clague, executive director of the University of Michigan (U-M) Arts Initiative.
 
Launched in 2019, the Arts Initiative aims to strengthen partnerships between existing U-M arts organizations and organizations outside the university, as well as provide funding and other forms of support for arts programming in the Ann Arbor area.
 
Clague describes the Arts Initiative as "the spark plug that’s trying to connect the passion, the energy, the talent, [and] the expertise of" U-M programs such as the University Musical Society, the University of Michigan Museum of Art, and students and professors from the U-M College of Literature, Science, and the Arts.
 Doug CoombeUniversity of Michigan Arts Initiative Executive Director Mark Clague.
The initiative provides funding for a range of specific projects, from Ann Arbor's annual FestiFools puppet parade to a mini-course at the U-M School of Kinesiology in which students make 3-D prints of bones. Clague says the initiative also supports the "creative practice and research" of arts faculty whose work "deserves to be celebrated and supported" in the same way as faculty scientists' and engineers' research.
 
Much of the Arts Initiative’s work thus far has focused on building collaborative networks and consortia among university officials and faculty who might share an interest in the arts, but simply didn't know of each other because of the university’s sheer size.
 
"There's so much about a big, sprawling institution like the University of Michigan that resists collaboration, from the practical [aspects] to the budgetary," Clague says. He adds that "the Arts Initiative has the bandwidth and the financial ability as a regranting agency" to encourage collaboration between organizations within the university.
 
"Part of the magic of the Arts Initiative," Clague says, has been in bringing together often widely dispersed individuals "who have never met each other … and saying, 'You guys have a shared mission, and if we work together, we can have a bigger impact.'"

"With Love, From Inside"
 
One of the many organizations that have benefited from the Arts Initiative is the Prison Creative Arts Project (PCAP), which connects incarcerated individuals with the U-M community. Ashley Lucas, former director of PCAP, was sitting in a faculty meeting one day when Clague walked in to discuss the possibilities of the Arts Initiative.
 
"One of his ideas … was to send performing arts groups from the campus on tour throughout the state of Michigan to take the arts work that we do on campus to communities that are not always served by our performing artists at the university," Lucas says. "I immediately raised my hand and said, ‘I’ve got a play.’"
 
Lucas, who served as the director of PCAP for six years starting in 2013 and still teaches in the program, had found that play almost by accident.
 
She and Mary Heinen McPherson, a formerly incarcerated woman with whom Lucas has long co-taught PCAP courses, had been approached by a group of U-M acting students who wanted to enroll in a PCAP workshop but were unable to make it work because of a scheduling conflict. The students asked Lucas and McPherson to conduct an independent study with them instead.  
 Doug CoombeUniversity of Michigan Professor Ashley Lucas.
"They were such a remarkable group of students, so amazingly talented. … None of them knew anything about prison, but intellectually, ethically, they just got it," Lucas says.
 
At the end of each semester, Lucas says she often hears sentiments from students like, "The people around me just don't understand … how amazing our experiences with these folks in prison are." She says this particular group of students told her, "Maybe if we made a play, it would help to convey that to people more effectively."
 
"So they asked the folks inside [the prison system], ‘If we could tell some of your stories in a play in the free world, what would you want us to say?’" Lucas says.
 
Working collaboratively with their incarcerated counterparts, the students began writing and workshopping scenes. Over the course of the 2023-2024 academic school year, that performance grew into the play "With Love, From Inside." A trailer for the play is available here, or it can be viewed in its entirety here.
 
In one scene, a man playing basketball "takes an elbow to the teeth and gets a bunch of teeth knocked out," Lucas says. He’s "bleeding profusely and tries to go get medical help."
 Doug CoombeUniversity of Michigan Professor Ashley Lucas.
Lucas describes the scene as a "Kafkaesque" representation of the "terrible health care situation in prisons," where medical officials "keep asking him to fill out all these forms, and he's bleeding all over them, so you can't read the forms, and they won't let him in."
 
As a whole, the finished play "tells the stories of all these people that we love in prison who we couldn't introduce to audiences out here," Lucas says.
 
Before Clague walked into Lucas' meeting, Lucas, McPherson, and their students had assumed they would stage their play once, during PCAP’s annual spring art exhibition, and that would be the end of it. Instead, they wound up taking the play on a tour of nine different venues in southeast Michigan. The Arts Initiative provided about $35,000 in funding for videography, stipends for actors and staff, transportation and meal costs, and props and set pieces.
 
"Everywhere we went, we found really interesting and compelling audiences," Lucas says. "Some of our audiences were mostly formerly incarcerated people. Some of them knew nothing about prison. … It felt like wherever we went, we found the audience that really needed us."
 
Culture Corps
 
Another U-M Arts Initiative-sponsored program known as Culture Corps matches undergraduate students with paid internships in the arts. One of those students is U-M senior Jasmine Parlett. After taking a break in her studies midway through her time at U-M, Parlett says she felt a disconnect with other students upon her return. However, when she found an internship at the Detroit Symphony Orchestra (DSO) last May through Culture Corps, she says "it was kind of like going home." Everything about the internship, from the work itself to its location in Detroit, gave the Harper Woods native "that sense of community."
 
Culture Corps aims to introduce students to an industry that can be notoriously difficult to break into, as well as to provide talented support to arts and culture organizations in southeast Michigan. Alongside the DSO, the Detroit Opera, the Arab American National Museum, InsideOut Literary Arts, and other organizations in metro Detroit, Ann Arbor, Ypsilanti, and Grand Rapids have hosted Culture Corps interns.
 
Students who are admitted to Culture Corps are also required to attend a mini-course to help prepare them for the work ahead.
 
Parlett says the course provided information about "what a good, competitive-looking resume" looks like, or "how you should professionally conduct yourself when working with your employers."
 Doug CoombeUniversity of Michigan senior Jasmine Parlett.
"I’m interested in the arts," Parlett says. But she admits, "I'm still not entirely sure if that's something that I’d like to pursue professionally, once I graduate."
 
Parlett, who is majoring in anthropology and minoring in creative writing, says she was initially interested in Culture Corps because she needed another credit to be considered a full-time student.
 
She’d experienced mental health challenges and was working hard to stay on track academically. Plus, she says, the chance to make "some extra money during the summer" was a welcome opportunity.
 
Payment is a crucial part of Culture Corps internships. According to the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE), students who participate in paid internships wind up earning a median starting salary of $62,500. Students who participate in unpaid internships earn a median starting salary of $42,500.
Doug CoombeUniversity of Michigan senior Jasmine Parlett. 
At the DSO, Parlett landed in the communications department, where her role mostly entailed grassroots marketing. She also attended events, where she was responsible for greeting partners and attendees, handing out flyers, and similar tasks. She says she learned a lot and that the internship helped improve her communication skills. 

"I think it helped me become more outgoing, less scared of talking to people," she says.
 
But Parlett says the experience also helped her in a larger, more intangible way. She says the internship helped her "grow as a person in terms of accepting personal responsibility and also being open and vulnerable with people."
 
"For the longest time, I thought that being vulnerable meant giving away something — like I had to give something away from [myself], something that I couldn’t give back," she says. "But that’s not true at all. It's simply opening a door so the other person can see you, and when that person feels that connection, you work better. You understand each other."

Natalia Holtzman is a freelance writer based in Ann Arbor. Her work has appeared in publications such as the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Literary Hub, The Millions, and others.

Photos by Doug Coombe.