from “le détroit” · the strait
The Michigan Central x Newlab Creative Residency launches its inaugural cohort this fall: six artists, $30,000 each, six months inside Corktown's innovation campus.
Michigan Central and Newlab are launching a creative residency that puts artists to work inside an active tech campus, and it pays. The inaugural cohort starts this fall with six artists, each receiving a $30,000 unrestricted stipend, six months of studio time, and access to Newlab Detroit's fabrication shop.
The program is funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. Cezanne Charles and John Marshall of the Detroit studio rootoftwo are administering it. Kelly Kivland, director and lead curator of Michigan Central Art, leads the curatorial side.
The 2024 fellows are Simon Anton, Ash Arder, Leith Campbell, Michael Candy, Kristina Sheufelt, and Wes Taylor. The brief is wide open: projects at the intersection of art, design, science, and technology, the kind of work that benefits from being made inside a working innovation campus. Newlab Detroit has occupied the renovated Book Depository building on the Michigan Central campus in Corktown since 2023, with a deep roster of startups in residence working on mobility, climate tech, robotics, and related fields.
Dropping six artists into the middle of that is the entire point. The residency leans toward emerging and mid-career artists with metro Detroit ties, and the stipends carry no strings.
Newlab membership comes with the residency, along with one-on-one mentorship and peer engagement from the researchers and entrepreneurs in the building. The fellows also get a public platform, since exhibitions and presentations are built into the program.
"Detroit has always been a generator for creative ingenuity, where cultural vision and technological experimentation intersect," Kivland said in the program's announcement. Newlab founder David Belt framed the exchange in similar terms, calling it the kind of cross-pollination that "sharpens the imagination behind critical technology."
The residency extends a line of work Michigan Central Art has been building on the campus. Bagley Mobility Hub, which opened in spring 2023, carried the program's first major commissions: a neon installation by Patrick Ethen in a stairwell, vinyl-wrapped water cisterns by Senghor Reid depicting Michigan waters, and a large lenticular facade piece by Garage Cultural titled "For Us, By Us." The residency pushes past one-off commissions into something more sustained.
The startups get artists pressure-testing their assumptions. The artists get the labs and the access. Both sides are betting Detroit is the place to do it.
A 2025 cohort follows the inaugural group, and the program expands again in 2026 with an Art and Health track in partnership with Henry Ford Health. The first public exhibition of fellows' work, titled Interface, runs April 9 to 11, 2026, at Newlab Detroit.
Newlab Detroit at Michigan Central, 2050 15th Street, Corktown.
One dispatch a week. No tracking, no filler. Free, always.