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Examining art and creativity's role in healing the community during the recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic

Posted at 6:35 PM, Sep 01, 2021
and last updated 2021-09-01 19:20:06-04

(WXYZ) — COVID-19 has certainly taken a toll on our community and it will take time for us to heal.

We're being joined for the 7 UpFront segment by the Director of Arts and Culture for the City of Detroit Rochelle Riley to talk about home art and creativity can help.

You can see the full interview in the video player above.

"My office of Arts, Culture, and Entrepreneurship was thrilled to partner with the Detroit Riverfront Conservancy and Cranbrook Art Museum and the TCF Center to do The Healing Memorial one year after we did the memorial on Belle Isle to give people the chance to mourn," Riley says. "What we wanted to do this year, on this Detroit Memorial Day, was to give people a chance to heal and help move forward a little bit in a pandemic that is gonna be around for a while. So, we had making stations all over the place. This is for anyone in the region. We had 30 of them. And they're little pouches and they're based on the Beaded Prayer Project that artist Sonya Clark has done for 20 years. And you just make your little pouch, whether its a square that you sew or something that you roll, and you put in a memory, an intention, something that you want to bring you closer to that person or that thing that you lost and then we put those all up in an art installation that's going to grow over the next year."