‘Better understanding of this history will teach us’

2007 alum and architecture professor is named a winner of the Detroit Knight Arts Challenge.

Last week, Emily Kutil, a 2007 graduate of Notre Dame, learned that she had been chosen to receive a grant through the Detroit Knight Arts Challenge, which helps fund great ideas for engaging and enriching communities through the arts. In 2016, the Knight Foundation is giving away a total of $8 million to grassroots ideas in four cities or communities: Akron, Ohio, Detroit, South Florida and St. Paul, Minnesota.

In Kutil’s case, she earned a $15,000 grant for her project called “Black Bottom Street View,” which was designed to connect Detroit residents with the Burton Historic Collection’s photographs of the former Black Bottom neighborhood through a website that maps the images and serves as a platform for neighborhood histories.

Kutil said the grant is a matching grant, so she must work on raising $15,000 of her own in the next year to make the project happen. 

Since graduating from NDP, Kutil has been busy. She did undergrad in architecture at the University of Cincinnati and added a master’s in architecture at the University of Michigan. 

“I then moved to Los Angeles after school and worked in a series of different places,” she said, “and moved back to Detroit in 2014. Now, I’m teaching architecture as an adjunct professor at UD-Mercy in addition to working as a freelance architect. I’m also working on something called ‘We the People of Detroit Community Research Collective.’”

She talked about her work on the recent Knight Arts Challenge.

“I was pretty shocked and overwhelmed when I learned my project was getting funded,” she said. “But also very excited to get started. I really want to thank all of my friends who have supported it, and who have offered their help, advice, ideas and encouragement.”

In the research portion of her project, Kutil found that the Burton Historical Collection at the Detroit Public Library has a collection of photos of every house in a huge area of Black Bottom, one of Detroit’s most historic black neighborhoods. 

“The photos were taken in 1949-1950, which was right before the neighborhood was demolished by the city,” she said. “For the past couple of years, I’ve been working on arranging the photos by street address so that you can see the neighborhood as a whole. And I’ve been making a big drawing that stitches the photos together into a continuous streetscape.” 

She also plans to make a website that maps the photos, so people can explore the neighborhood digitally and to contribute their own histories, memories and photos. Another part of the project will include a book of commissioned writings by Detroiters and illustrated by a drawing. She said the funding will pay for the website, the book, and the research necessary to make the website into a searchable database where families can look up homes by family name and address.

“I’m really feeling the weight of this project now after getting the grant,” she said. “It needs to be done well, and with love. Nothing I could say here would do justice to the significance of this place, and the impact its residents and their descendants have had on the city of Detroit and on the whole of contemporary culture. My hope is that Black Bottom Street View can help to make its history more visible for all of us — and that a better understanding of this history will teach us something about the current forms of displacement that are shaping Detroit today.” 

More information is available at blackbottomstreetview.com.

Comments or questions? mkelly@ndpma.org.

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About Notre Dame Preparatory School and Marist Academy

Notre Dame Preparatory School and Marist Academy is a private, Catholic, independent, coeducational day school located in Oakland County. The school's upper division enrolls students in grades nine through twelve and has been named one of the nation's best 50 Catholic high schools (Acton Institute) four times since 2005. Notre Dame's middle and lower divisions enroll students in jr. kindergarten through grade eight. All three divisions are International Baccalaureate "World Schools." The Marist Fathers and Brothers sponsor NDPMA's Catholic identity and manages its educational program. Notre Dame is accredited by the National Association of Independent Schools, the Independent Schools Association of the Central States and the North Central Association Commission on Accreditation and School Improvement. For more on Notre Dame Preparatory School and Marist Academy, visit the school's home page at www.ndpma.org.