Detroit’s Oakland Avenue Urban Farm has snagged a $500,000 grant from ArtPlace America

The Oakland Avenue Urban Farm Team, in front of the Farm’s Community House in Detroit’s North End. Click on image for larger file.

Largest urban farm in Detroit’s North End will transform into a five-acre landscape combining art, architecture, sustainable ecologies, and new market practices

By Robin Runyan
Curbed Detroit
Dec 9, 2016,

Excerpt:

Within this two-year project, these groups will:

Explore ways to reactivate existing architectures with innovative locally rooted programming,
Take the site off-grid by creating artful and functional infrastructures,
Foster worker-owned businesses as economic drivers, and
Integrate the arts into the fabric of community life.

The plans include:

Transforming a vacant residence into a convivial community dining hall and hostel accommodating visiting artists, agriculture specialists, and chefs.
Creating the Art Farm House—an exhibition space and mini art school for children and adults set in a neo-rural landscape—and an irrigation infrastructure that will serves as an “urban marker” and other energy-efficient systems.
Launching of the North End Superette, a farm-fresh convenience store and retail space for the farm’s value-added products.

Read the complete article here.