Maker City

Born in Detroit, Robert has been creating work since 1967. He has exhibited at the Detroit Institute of Arts, Museum of Contemporary Art (Chicago), Cranbrook Museum of Art, and Marianne Boesky Gallery (New York City), among others. In 2015, he opened City Sculpture Park, a public art space in Detroit exhibiting three decades of work. His work is held in numerous collections, including the Detroit Institute of Arts, Cranbrook Museum of Art, and Wayne State University. Robert is the recipient of grants from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.

The Empowerment Plan is a Detroit based nonprofit organization focused on permanently elevating families from the generational cycle of homelessness. The company hires single parents from local shelters and provides them with training and full-time employment as seamstresses so that they can earn a stable income, find secure housing, and regain their independence. These individuals manufacture a coat designed to meet the needs of those in the homeless community. The durable EMPWR Coat can transform into a sleeping bag at night or an over-the-shoulder bag when not in use. Since 2012, they have provided employment to homeless individuals—all of whom have now secured permanent housing for themselves and their families —and distributed over 15,000 coats to those in need across the U.S. and Canada.

Pastor Barry Randolph is a transformational leader. He has taken a church that was on the verge of closing its doors and made it into a vital community enterprise that is changing lives and building futures on the Lower East Side of Detroit. The congregation of the Church of the Messiah went from 40 members with an average age of 56 in 2008 to 300 members, 60 percent of them black men under the age of 30, in 2016.

The Khzouz-Grants used their family inheritance to create Kulture Klubhouse, extending their home to their greater community as a place to live, create, and learn about personal histories and to celebrate the many ethnicities and tribes of Detroit.

Vincent created his clothing line, Kill the Hate, to encourage every individual to let the hate inside themselves “die daily”. Vincent reports that the t-shirts and hats, designed and made in Detroit, have been effective, especially among young people, in de-escalating arguments and sparking conversation.

Michelle & Chris Gerard are freelance photographers living in Detroit. While working with Curbed Detroit and Eater Detroit, in addition to their own photography projects, they are building a large archive of photography of the city.

Everard Findlay blends branding and social innovation to empower CEOs, heads of state, and thought leaders to invest in a future that benefits citizens, the environment, and society as a whole while building profitability and growth.

Findlay has served on the board of GrowNYC, the Council for the Environment of New York City since 2009 and is currently Communications Chair. He is a founding trustee of The Museum of the Courageous, NeueHouse, tenured board member of Soho House, UNDP Turning Tables, Dartmouth College’s Institute for Cross-engagement, The New York Times’ Friends of TimesTalks Committee and The National Center for Children in Poverty.

16 years ago Olayami Dabls came to the corner of Grand River and West Grand Blvd with a vision to create a space for his community to understand the immense power of their African heritage.

Occupying almost an entire city block, the MBAD African Bead Museum houses 18 outdoor installations as well as the African Bead Gallery, N’kisi House, and African Language Wall. Born of his own visual cosmology, Dabls’ MBAD African Bead Museum sparks a vital conversation with global and local audiences.

Peter Cummings has been active in real estate development and management since 1975. He is the founder of RAM, a leader in real estate investment, management and development, based in Palm Beach County and active throughout the Southeast. In 2015, he stepped down as chairman of RAM to create The Platform and dedicated the next chapter of his career to helping rebuild the city through creating new housing and retail developments. He was educated at Yale University and the University of Toronto with a Master of English Literature. He has also completed the Owner & President Management Program at the Harvard Business School.

Gabriel Craig & Amy Weiks founded Smithshop, a craft-focused metalworking studio that produces functional and ornamental metalwork specializing in the custom fabrication of gold, silver, copper, brass, and steel. Smithshop also offers metalworking classes and workshops at their studio in partnership with the Center for Craft & Applied Arts, an arts advocacy non-profit organization which they founded in 2015.

Alexandra Clark is the founder of Bon Bon Bon, a boutique chocolatier, where internationally trained artisan confiseurs use classic French technique in conjunction with Detroit ingenuity, local ingredients, and artistic interpretation to create flavors that range from classic to bizarre, familiar to exotic, all-candy to all-chocolate.

MKR City expands the use of the word “Maker” to include individuals working to build their communities and neighborhoods in resourceful and often astonishing ways. From visual artists, to musicians, to barbers, to physicists, to inventive mowers-of-lawns, to homemakers, to city-planners and developers, MKR City exists to connect visionaries in infinite fields, united by the desire to create social, cultural and economic value while fostering the common good.

The Fisher Building has been an iconic landmark in Detroit since its completion in 1928. While its significance in Detroit’s history never waned, The Fisher’s position in the city’s growth and real estate market has. Through The Platform’s stewardship— respecting its historic integrity, activating its retail and office spaces, and developing a new brand—the Fisher Building will be the beacon for inclusion and transformation in Detroit.

The Fisher Building has played a seminal role in Detroit’s history. The Fisher was imagined as a building to honor the people of Detroit—an ode to the American work ethic and to American artisans. The Fisher Building is visible from many neighborhoods of Metro Detroit. The reactivation of the arcade will establish this space as the main public gathering area for New Center and beyond, a place for cultural and community programming, fine food and beverage and distinctive retail.

The SitOnIt Detroit project builds benches out of reclaimed wood sourced from abandoned Detroit homes. Each bench contains a free lending-library and is placed at inner city bus-stops and parks across Detroit. Kyle Bartell and his partner Charles Molnar have teamed up with the City of Detroit and other organizations to provide as many benches as possible.

“I am humbled to be playing a vital role in Detroit’s comeback and amazed to watch the city grow to what it is now. Detroit is big enough to matter to the world, but small enough for you to matter in it.”