Arts & Culture
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Music therapy is a calming, soothing connector
Sophie’s Place is a bright comfortable music studio, tucked away in a corner at U-M’s C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital. Named for young singer-songwriter Sophie Rose Barton, the studio brings its own kind of healing to patients, families, and therapists.
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48217: The Stamps Pollution Mural Project
‘48217’ is known as Michigan’s most polluted zip code. Community activists in this community near Detroit teamed up with Stamps Professor Joe Trumpey and his students in Fall 2022 to draw attention to the poor air quality in this industrial area — to stunning effect.
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‘A place that respected one’s confusion’
In a book of essays marking U-M’s 150th year, playwright Arthur Miller and other distinguished alumni revisit the halcyon days of college. Set against today’s digital backdrop, ‘Our Michigan’ makes a cogent and contemporary case for the bricks-and-mortar learning experience.
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The ‘breathtaking’ job of reviving an icon
As a kid growing up in southwest Detroit, Manuel “Manny” Martinez played paintball in the hulking, long-abandoned Michigan Central Station. Today, he’s a construction superintendent helping Ford Motor Co. drive the $1 billion transformation of this historic landmark.
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Marching Band’s Elbel Field poised for major makeover
U-M’s iconic Elbel Field will be transformed into a marching band practice facility now that the Regents have approved project design plans and authorized construction to proceed.
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Refugee-focused community garden celebrates its first year
The garrden, a collaboration between Jewish Family Services of Washtenaw County and Matthaei Botanical Gardens and Nichols Arboretum, has turned a previously unused, grass-covered space into a fertile, productive plot.
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Blindfolded Rubik’s Cube world champion sets the score (on violin)
For many, the colorful 3×3 Rubik’s Cube was an infuriating, and largely impossible, puzzle to solve. But for one U-M student, the cube opened doors to international travel, a Guinness World Records entry, and multiple world championship titles.
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Bruno Martelli and Ruth Gibson bring extended-reality tech to U-M
The London-based team, specializing in extended-reality technology, will be the new 2023 artists in residency at the Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, in partnership with the U-M Arts Initiative.
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Keep the light alive: The glimmer of cautious optimism
To memorialize students who died in service during World War II, U-M officials sought input from such global luminaries as Winston Churchill and Orson Welles. But in the end, a new generation of students created a different kind of tribute — one that could ‘actually do something.’