Meet City Institute, our Detroit in Context Bus Tour guides for ReFrame 2024
Just a few months out from ReFrame Conference 2024, we're looking forward to gathering together in Detroit. Detroit has been spotlighting the importance of home repair, and there is no better way to learn about the community than to get out and experience it. That's why we're teaming up with City Institute to offer a half-day tour of the community.
Detroit in Context Bus Tour: Housing & Home Repair Edition
Detroit is a complicated city. It has tons of amazing assets but also faces many challenges. One thing is for sure, Detroit is much more than headlines and stereotypes. On this tour you’ll be taken around the city by an expert guide, Jeanette Pierce, Founder & President of City Institute.
On this tour, Jeanette will provide context and local insight into Detroit's neighborhoods, small businesses and community projects. The goal of this experience is to help attendees understand how Detroit’s history shaped where we are today, connect with what’s happening now and be able to implement lessons learned in their own work.
About Jeanette, Founder & President of City Institute
Jeanette Pierce is a social entrepreneur and lifelong city resident who grew up on Detroit's Eastside. She is a data nerd that loves cities and an engaging storyteller with a passion for providing context around complex issues.
She founded the City Institute to help cities with attraction & retention by ensuring people understand and appreciate where they live and work. She helps cities tell their story so more locals and newcomers feel connected to, and truly care about, their community. When people care about where they live they are more invested in supporting small businesses, volunteering at nonprofit organizations, collaborating with neighbors throughout the city, and building an equitable and thriving future.
Since 2005, Jeanette has used experiential learning and non-traditional tours to help more than 150,000 locals and newcomers in Detroit love where they live and work by teaching them about Detroit’s assets, small businesses, historic neighborhoods, city planning & development policies and innovative solutions to the challenges the city faces.
Tour Discussion Points include:
- Programs and policies that specifically relate to housing and home repair
- Detroit’s assets from architecture to cultural gems to public spaces
- History of Detroit including racist policies that shaped where we are today
- Discussion of Detroit’s challenges including population loss and blight
- Overview of some of Detroit’s innovative and impactful projects and small businesses
Highlights include (stops bold):
- Coffee at Rosa - Speak with Charity Dean and Grandmont Rosedale CDC (one of the newest Coalition members!)
- Campus Martius Park and Downtown Developments
- History of Black Bottom and Paradise Valley
- Guardian Building - Hear from Detroit Land Bank
- Museums and Cultural Center
- Highland Park and Historic Ford Factory
- Stop at Central Detroit Christian to learn about their Minor Home Repair Program
- Detroit People’s Food Co-Op
- Palmer Woods Historic District
- Historic Avenue of Fashion/Detroit’s Black Business District
Participating in the Detroit in Context Tour
We're offering two tour time slot options. Both tours will be held on the first day of the conference, on November 13th, 2024. Tour #1 will take place from 9am - 12pm, immediately after the opening keynote session, and Tour #2 will take place from 1pm - 4pm, immediately after lunch.
To participate in the tour, you must purchase a tour ticket. Tour tickets must be purchased before November 8th, 2024. You will need to choose your time slot at the time of purchasing your ticket.
