City of Detroit hosts a Performing Arts Summit for creative arts leaders and workers to discuss investing in the city’s creative workforce for a strong economy

2025

The City of Detroit Office of Arts, Culture and Entrepreneurship (Detroit ACE) in partnership with the Detroit School of Arts (DSA) and the Kresge Foundation, is hosting a city-wide Performing Arts Summit, Art is Business, to examine ways to better support one of the nation’s greatest creative workforces. The summit continues the Creativity Takes Courage campaign ACE began last year.

Art is Business is Saturday, March 1 at 10 a.m. at the Detroit School of Arts, 123 Selden Street. It will feature Detroit musicians, filmmakers and performers as well as leaders from other cities who have tackled similar issues. The summit will mirror forums and conferences being held nationwide to address the challenges faced by those in entertainment industries and recommend ways to create a more collaborative creative economy and arts sector.

For example, this month the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and Creatives Rebuild New York hosted “Investing in the Creative Workforce for a Strong Economy.”  The event featured presentations and discussions on creative financing of cultural spaces and businesses and worker cooperatives to support creative workers. Their theme: Art Takes Work, was epitomized in this video: https://vimeo.com/1045811198

This Detroit performing arts summit shares these same challenges and will examine how the creative community and its workforce can drive a healthy economy across Detroit, Michigan and the nation.

Professionals in the genres of theatre, music, dance and film are invited to participate as a large group and then work in separate breakout sessions to share ways that Detroit’s performing arts workforce can drive a healthy economy and enrich our community.  

This summit will feature presentations on Detroit's creative landscape and recommend ways to increase our creative arts investment and learn what individual performers and workers need to be successful in Detroit.

The Summit comes at a time when creative economies across the country are grappling with:

  • New technology such as artificial intelligence (AI) threatening artistic intellectual property.
  • The growing costs of living affecting high rates of displacement.
  • The uncertainty of career or entrepreneurial pathways into the arts sector.

All require new pivots and cross-industry partnerships that could shape a different foreseeable future. 

Creative professionals in theatre, music, dance and film who wish to tackle these questions should register for the Summit and indicate which industry they represent at:

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/1248698915069?aff=oddtdtcreator

About Detroit ACE

Detroit ACE (Detroit City Arts) partners with organizations across the region to enhance and grow investment in fine and performing arts, culture and history with a special focus on artistic entrepreneurship and support for Detroit’s creative workforce. Twitter,  Instagram  and Facebook. Take a look at five years’ worth of ACE work @ https://heyzine.com/flip-book/ae8130edcc.html