The Kresge Foundation Detroit and Arts & Culture programs played co-host to arts funders and supporters from across the country Oct. 28-31 for the 2017 Grantmakers in the Arts Conference in Detroit. Kresge Arts & Culture Program Managing Director Regina R. Smith chaired the conference organizing committee, which also included Kresge Detroit Program Fellow Alycia Socia.

Four days of intensive breakout sessions, plenary discussions and informal networking at the Renaissance Center were supplemented with educational field trips to Detroit cultural landmarks including the Arab American National Museum, The Alley Project, Mexicantown, The Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, the Detroit Opera House, Artist Village, N’Namdi Center for Contemporary Art, Ponyride and the Detroit Institute of Arts among others.

Kresge President and CEO Rip Rapson delivered closing remarks to the attendees, issuing a call to action to stand up for principles including stewardship, creative problem-solving based on community wisdom, recognition and celebration of individuals’ dignity and optimism in the power of faith, grace and beauty.

Arts and culture, he said, must play a key role in advancing those principles.

“In no time in my memory has it been more important for arts and culture to become part of a larger movement of social justice – helping strengthen the alliances necessary to speak to and advance those truths of equity, fairness, and justice that we know to be inviolable.”

Rapson’s full remarks are available in the Kresge Library.

Recaps and more information on the conference, including recordings of many of the sessions will be available on the GIA website.