Welcome to Inside Southwest Detroit. The idea of the site is to present Southwest Detroit. Through pictures, articles, links, a virtual tour and other informative ventures we hope to provide information helping to shape within the visitor a perspective of Southwest Detroit from the inside–out.
Information on Southwest Detroit will be made more easily attainable as fruits of this project. Our hope is that this will be a one-stop web shop for all things Southwest- your link to SW Detroit’s web presence.
History
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Inside Southwest Detroit began as a labor of love. The short story is a notebook of articles was created to help with a touch of homesickness while studying in Los Angeles and shortly after to showcase the community to others in an attempt to fuel passion in others to want to come to the community.
In detail, ISD started as a small collection of articles from various media publications and was an opportunity to share with residents the community that has raised so many of us and also to promote understanding of the community and culture that is foreign to those not from here. An understanding professor and a combination of passion for southwest Detroit, interests in photography, writing, and multi-media expression eventually helped the original notebook evolve, making the first ISD possible in 1999. The site was to be built as an independent study for Sociology credit. As time went on and traffic increased, the support and suggestions of visitors contributed greatly to the vision and direction of the site.
In 2002 Art Crimes (http://www.artcrimes.com) added a link on their site under ‘Detroit’ and traffic to Murals of SW Detroit, a section of ISD, really picked up. At that point what the website was doing changed a little. Now not only were we documenting the aerosol art in the neighborhood-we were also sharing our community with the world. With entries from Germany, Finland, LA, Chicago, NY and more in the guestbook we learned that we had quite an audience. With the input and support from site visitors-both local and from abroad-we were encouraged to promote the site and continue and expand our presentation of our community.
The site has seen many changes in concept, scope, design and more since 1999 when it was created. But the central theme remains the presentation of southwest Detroit. There has been and remains a special commitment by Inside Southwest Detroit to the current main sections: Community, Culture, History, and Photography and everything they include. This usually includes the good and the bad, the things we are proud of and the the things we are plagued by, our progress and our struggles.
Vision
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Our hope is that our visitors are inspired by the content of the site and are encouraged to be active in the community and work hard to celebrate and build around the things that bring us together. We also hope that our visitors are challenged by the content and are enabled through the resources and community within the website to work hard to change the things that are the source of our struggles.
Our opportunity to contribute is where our passion intersects our community’s need. Let us celebrate opportunity… both the opportunity that already exists that the site can shine light on as well as those that come about as the result of Inside Southwest Detroit!!
Contact Us
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We are ALWAYS looking for feedback and suggestions for Inside Southwest Detroit, especially in our transition becoming an online magazine. Please direct any questions or comments to:
erikhoward@insidesouthwest.com
313.598.2050
