Sixteen Detroit-area nonprofits will share $1.3 million through the Kresge Innovative Projects: Detroit Plus (KIP:D+) Cultural Heritage grant initiative for projects that range from preserving Detroit’s Indigenous cultural traditions to documenting Black women’s health stories through photography and storytelling to an oral history archive strengthening intergenerational connection.

The organizations will spend the next two years implementing projects shaped by community engagement to remember history, care for important local places and strengthen belonging across neighborhoods.

Funded by The Kresge Foundation, KIP:D+ is led in partnership by Kresge, Co.act and Michigan Community Resources (MCR).

It is a successor to the Kresge Innovative Projects: Detroit initiative which was launched in 2014. With the grants announced today, KIP:D and KIP:D+ have distributed more than $16 million since 2015.

A new focus: KIP:D+ Cultural Heritage

This year’s grants mark a significant shift in the program’s approach. In 2025, KIP:D+ paused while partners reflected on feedback from past applicants and grantees, working with an independent organization and an advisory group of residents from Detroit, Hamtramck and Highland Park to review the program and make informed improvements.

Following this evaluation, Co.act led the program redesign and community-informed selection process for the 2026 round. Kresge provides funding and resumed grants administration to strengthen their connection with the three communities, and MCR provides applicant and grantee support infrastructure.

As a result, KIP:D+ relaunched with a focus on cultural heritage. At a time when many communities are facing uncertainty and division, shared cultural heritage work helps strengthen belonging and connection, preserve places and traditions, protect stories that matter for future generations, and imagine futures rooted in community voice.

This round supports arts, culture and community projects dedicated to helping residents remember their history, care for places that matter, share and celebrate stories and culture, build something meaningful for the future,and strengthen belonging across generations.

“Cultural heritage is not simply what we preserve from the past, it is the foundation from which communities understand who they are and imagine what is possible,” said Shamyle Dobbs, co-CEO of Michigan Community Resource. “For nearly a decade, MCR has helped ensure that KIP:D is more than a grant program by building the scaffolding around community-rooted leaders, including the guidance, technical support, relationships and shared learning that help powerful ideas become sustainable work. These projects honor the people, places, traditions and stories that have held our communities together. Our role is to help ensure those closest to that history have the infrastructure, resources and power to carry it forward.”

More than $16M awarded since 2015

Kresge has funded innovative projects in Detroit through its KIP:D grant initiative since the first grants were made in 2015. In 2017, Kresge partnered with MCR to strengthen the structure of KIP:D and expand the support available to applicants and grantees through workshops, individualized technical assistance and cohort-based learning.

Kresge transitioned administration of the program to Co.act in 2021, at which time the “Plus” was added to highlight the new collaboration and expansion of the program to include eligibility of projects in Hamtramck and Highland Park. These cohorts have grown into a community of change agents, learning together with a common cause.

The 2026 round of KIP:D+ Cultural Heritage awards brings the total grant support to more than $16 million distributed across hundreds of projects and planning efforts.

“Detroit’s cultural heritage lives in its people, places, traditions and stories, and residents are its most important stewards,” said Wendy Lewis Jackson, managing director of  Kresge’s Detroit Program. “These grants recognize cultural heritage as essential to strong, connected neighborhoods and support community-led projects that preserve what matters, deepen belonging across generations and help residents shape the future of Detroit, Hamtramck and Highland Park.”

Ezekiel Harris, executive director of Co.act, said: “KIP:D+ shows what’s possible when funders, community partners and residents design a grant program together from the beginning. Residents from Detroit, Hamtramck and Highland Park helped shape what cultural heritage means for this round and how that history gets resourced and preserved. That kind of shared decision-making matters most right now, when so much of our history is being contested or erased. This partnership offers a blueprint other regions can look to for what participatory grantmaking can accomplish at scale.”

The KIP:D+ selection committee is composed of residents from Detroit, Hamtramck and Highland Park, along with Co.act and Kresge staff. Selection committee members represent a diverse range of perspectives and lived experiences, including the local arts and culture community. Of granted organizations, 81% have leaders who identify as BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and people of color) and 75% are led by women. Organizations include a range of budget sizes, with 50% working with annual operating budgets of less than $500,000 per year.

Meet this year’s KIP:D+ Cultural Heritage grantees

American Indian Health and Family Services will create one of Detroit’s first permanent Indigenous cultural healing landscapes on their new 5.3-acre Health and Wellness Campus in Southwest Detroit. The project will feature a medicine garden with traditional plants, a ceremonial sweat lodge, and a gathering area for cultural healing, prayer and intergenerational connection.

Art & Soul Community Memorial Garden will create a permanent community mural and art installation centered on healing, remembrance and neighborhood pride, transforming the garden into a lasting cultural destination that reflects resident stories and strengthens belonging.

Bailey Park Neighborhood Development Corporation will implement a community-driven initiative focused on preserving neighborhood history, celebrating cultural heritage and activating public spaces through arts, storytelling, oral history, public art and community engagement.

Black Bottom Archives will transform neighborhood gathering spaces into living archives by hosting block club and block party-style activations where Black Detroiters share stories, reflect on place and engage in intergenerational exchange in familiar, community-held environments.

Brilliant Detroit will implement a multigenerational oral history archive across eight neighborhood hubs. Through facilitated conversations, interviews, creative workshops and public art activities, the project will engage residents from diverse Detroit neighborhoods in preserving local history and strengthening intergenerational connection.

Canfield Consortium, in collaboration with the University of Michigan Art History Department and Black Bottom Archives, will work to recover, preserve and permanently memorialize the “lost” Black Power murals of 1968: the Wall of Dignity and the Harriet Tubman (Let My People Go) mural.

Detroit Artists Market will preserve, organize, digitize and publicly activate nearly a century of Detroit contemporary art history. The project will transform DAM’s vulnerable physical archive, which documents thousands of artists and decades of exhibitions, Black arts movements and creative community history, into a publicly accessible cultural resource.

Detroit Chamber Winds will revive Detroit’s historic tradition of neighborhood-based jazz mentorship through an 18-month series of intergenerational gatherings led by Detroit jazz culture bearers Marion Hayden (2025 Kresge Eminent Artist), Wendell Harrison (2018 Kresge Eminent Artist) and Kris Johnson (201 Kresge Artist Fellow). Held monthly in homes, churches, and neighborhood spaces, these sessions will preserve the deeply personal ways Detroit jazz knowledge has historically been shared within the community.

Hamtramck Historical Museum will restore and activate the century-old museum’s basement space for use as a cultural center celebrating Hamtramck’s diverse heritage through education classes, cultural programming and community gatherings.

Highland Park Old Timers will lead work to preserve oral histories, archive photographs and documents, and host community storytelling and reunion gatherings that honor longtime residents and connect youth with elders to pass on community knowledge and traditions.

MBAD African Bead Museum will launch an African Futurist greenhouse, a pilot cultural heritage apprenticeship program engaging 15 Detroit high school students in growing indigo, bamboo, and Job’s Tears plants to transform them into wearable art, jewelry, dyed fabrics, and sculptural works inspired by African artistic traditions. (Founder Olayami Dabls is the 2022 Kresge Eminent Artist)

Remembering Cherubs will use portrait photography and personal storytelling to honor Black women’s health, healing, and lived experiences. The project will launch as a public exhibit during the 2027 Black Women’s Health Month kickoff event.

Ruth Ellis Center will implement a Theater of the Oppressed collaboration with LGBTQ+ young people of color in Detroit, incorporating visual art, fashion design and a culminating public show that centers youth voices and experiences.

Sasha Center, in collaboration with eleven24, will create safe spaces for intergenerational dialogue that centers the rich cultural heritage of Detroit’s African American LGBTQIA community while fostering connection and empowerment between elders and youth.

Shrine of the Black Madonna will preserve, organize, and digitize archival materials documenting decades of Black liberation theology, organizing, culture and institution-building in Detroit. The project will include community archive review gatherings with elders and stakeholders to identify photographs and document historical context.

Eastside Community Network (formerly the Warren Conner Development Coalition) will produce a feature-length documentary preserving the personal histories, family stories and decades of civic leadership of Black women elders, every co-producer between 65 and 90+ years old, who held Detroit’s Goodstock neighborhoods together through disinvestment and displacement.

“As KIP:D+ marks its 10th grantmaking round, we were intentional about ensuring the program continues to respond to community priorities.” said Kresge Associate Program Officer Chris LeFlore. “At a time of tremendous change, these projects give residents an opportunity to preserve the histories that shaped their communities and honor the people carrying those legacies forward. Together, this cohort will create a rich tapestry of cultural heritage across Detroit, Hamtramck and Highland Park, reflecting the distinct places, traditions and identities that define them.”

Learn more about KIP:D+ at kresge.org/initiative/kipd-plus/.