Tyree Guyton’s childhood home on Heidelberg Street, where his mother still lives among the sculptures (www.heidelberg.org).
Tyree Guyton grew up on Heidelberg Street on the East Side of Detroit in the 1950s. When he returned in 1986, he found his once thriving neighborhood deep in poverty and riddled with drugs. Disappointed with the loss of what once was, his solution was to turn the neighborhood into an art environment now extending along multiple blocks of the street. The goal was to revive and enrich the lives and social and economic health of the community through art, namely The Heidelberg Project.
The art, primarily sculptures, is made up of found objects and integrated into the landscape of vacant houses, and anyone who didn’t know better might think the street is a junkyard. While it was originally met with backlash from neighbors who didn’t want the eyesore in their backyards, Tyree’s artwork has brought attention to urban blight and improved the social and economic conditions of the neighborhood and surrounding communities.
The art is participatory and encourages community involvement, but that is not enough. While the art itself can only do so much to improve the wellbeing of a community, Tyree has turned The Heidelberg Project into a philosophy of social change. His philosophy is to be part of the solution. The solution to whatever problem you may encounter, but for him that problem is urban blight in his own backyard. The Heidelberg Project has partnered with schools surrounding the neighborhood to provide a free arts education in and after school to empower students to become change makers in their own communities. What started as a way to bring back a neighborhood of the past has turned into a movement for change in the future.
I am not suggesting that we turn every poverty stricken street corner or abandoned building into an art installation, but how can Tyree’s philosophy of social change and revitalization be applied to other struggling communities? While The Heidelberg Project is successful in the East Side of Detroit, I would be curious to see how well a similar project would be received elsewhere.
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