Office of Research

Arts & Culture Research Cluster

The Arts and Culture (A+C) Research Cluster was created out of a desire to bring researchers, students, regional cultural institutions, and community organizations together in collaborative partnership with the goal of advancing the intellectual and cultural vibrancy of Flint, Michigan, and making an impact on the national cultural landscape. A+C aims to bridge existing gaps in coordination and cultivate new and diverse audiences for the arts, primarily through Riverbank Arts, our community-centered space for creatives, community members, and academics to develop and find support for artistic and cultural production in Flint. A+C seeks collaborative program funding and opportunities, shares information, and promotes artistic and cultural collaborations, elevating the arts and culture of the city of Flint. Those with questions or with interest in joining this research cluster should contact group leader Ben Gaydos.

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Research Objectives

As a research collaborative, the Arts & Culture Research Cluster team will focus on three main areas:

• Interdisciplinary Dialogue
  • Collectively engage in conversation with colleagues around shared interests and initiatives
  • Outwardly engage in dialogue beyond our campus
• Local Impact through Civic Engagement
  • Publicly engage in creative practice + scholarship as a means to create positive social impact
  • Strengthening relationships with community partners and institutions
• Collaborative Opportunities + Initiatives
  • Develop public programming and events 
  • Develop community based collaborative spaces
  • Pursue larger grant opportunities

Read our 2022 Progress Report

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Current Research & Activities

We are laying the groundwork for the Flint Cultural Network, a multi-faceted community arts and culture network. Working with institutional and community partners, the Flint Cultural Network revolves around three initiatives:

• Development of an Arts + Culture Asset Map and Community Resource 
• Programming of Arts + Culture Events with Community Partners 
• Establishment of a Local Artist/Research Residency Program

In January 2022, the Arts+Culture Research Cluster launched Riverbank Arts: a community space for the arts located on the first floor of the Northbank Center on 400 N. Saginaw Street in Flint, Michigan.  Riverbank Arts is a community-centered space for creatives, community members, and academics to develop and find support for artistic and cultural production in Flint.  Not only do we see this space as a way to connect with the Flint community, but we also view Riverbank as a way to connect our students and faculty from various disciplines and backgrounds within the University of Michigan-Flint.  For this reason, we do not limit ourselves to act as a space for solely the visual arts, but all types of media involved with the arts.  Overall, we hope Riverbank Arts can connect several spheres, including Flint’s downtown community, commerce, and UM-Flint community.

Riverbank Arts has a full and successful exhibition schedule for 2022 and will cultivate that same success for exhibitions planned in 2023.  These past and future exhibitions include a work from the Beirut design collective Studio Safar, a work from the Juvenile Justice Center (and a proposed interdisciplinary curriculum pending funding from The Arts Initiative), and a Common Read exhibition, among others. The Cluster will also support guest artists, lectures, and performances proposed by A+C faculty in Theater, Music, and English. 

We have received continuous support from our own Office of Research and Economic Development here at UM-Flint, as well as support from external organizations such as the University Musical Society (UMS) in Ann Arbor in hand with the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation by means of funding for our UMS/UMF Artist Residency, along with financial support from the Community Foundation of Greater Flint for our Emerging Artist Fellowship program in collaboration with Buckham Fine Arts Project.

Emerging Artist Fellowship

(2022-2023): Steven Banks

University of Michigan-Flint Arts + Culture Research Cluster with Buckham Fine Arts Project announces Steven Banks as the 2022 – 2023 Emerging Artist Fellowship recipient.

“My art is meant to have no limits or boundaries. I create because it’s good for the soul and it doesn’t matter how others feel about it. To live your life in full creation. Every moment is a story, and my art looks to shine bright on the everyday lives we live,” said Steven Banks, the 2022 – 2023 Emerging Artist Fellowship recipient.

The Emerging Artist Fellowship collaboration between the Arts + Culture Research Cluster at UM-Flint and Buckham Fine Arts Project provides a nourishing space for artists to grow and acquire essential professional development opportunities to succeed as they enter the art world. This collaboration and Fellowship were established in 2021. A committee of UM-Flint faculty, students, community members, Buckham artists, and leadership reviewed submissions to the Fellowship. The review committee interviewed a short list of applicants, and ultimately, Steven Banks was selected for the fellowship.

Read more about Steven Banks and the Emerging Artist Fellowship here

UMS/UMF Artist in Residence

(2021-2023): Ash Arder

The University Musical Society and the Arts + Culture Research Cluster at UM-Flint are delighted to announce Ash Arder, Flint native and transdisciplinary artist, as the selected 2021-23 Flint-area artist in residence. 

Arder’s artistry and research interrogate viewers’ own proximity to and participation in social and climate justice issues. Through highlighting moments of tension where she finds ruptures in empathy between living entities and the objects and space surrounding them, she hopes to shed insight into the conditions causing these “relational glitches.” Her work exposes, deconstructs, manipulates, or reconfigures physical and conceptual systems while intimately examining the relationship between humans and more-than-humans through sound, sculpture, installation, literary and moving-image works.

Ash Arder will develop a new body of work incorporating sound and sculpture, which explores relationships between music, storytelling, and place. As the artist in residence, Arder will engage with UM-Flint campus and community for the duration of the academic year, facilitating and leading on-campus workshops, artist talks, and community engagement activities while collaborating and mentoring emerging artists.

Read an interview with Ash about their work here

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Art + Culture Cluster Members

Ben Gaydos
Benjamin Gaydos is a Detroit-based designer and educator. Ben has conducted research in design and anthropology at Virginia Commonwealth University, where he received an MFA in Visual Communication/Design. He has presented his work at Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), Harvard University, and MIT’s Media Lab, among other institutions. Ben is the co-founder and principal of goodgood, a social impact design studio with offices in Boston and Detroit. He is the founding editor and creative director at Flint Magazine, a producer and designer for Sensate Journal at Harvard University, and the director of the Community Design Studio in Flint. Ben is Chair of the Department of Art & Art History and Associate Professor of Design at UM-Flint where he is a faculty fellow at the Urban Institute for Racial, Economic, & Environmental Justice.

Jacob Blumner
Jacob Blumner is the director of the Marian E. Wright Writing Center and Professor of English at UM-Flint. His professional interests beyond writing centers include writing across the curriculum, writing theory, and haiku. His scholarship has appeared in writing-across-the-curriculum journals, and he is the co-editor of two essay collections. He has also presented his scholarship at the International Writing Centers Association Conference, the International Writing Across the Curriculum Conference, and other national and regional conferences. His creative work has appeared in Qua, Wales Haiku Journal, The Zen Space, and others. Jacob holds a Ph.D. in rhetoric and composition from the University of Nevada.

Nicole Broughton-Adams
Nicole is the Program Director for the MA Arts Administration Program at the Horace Rackham Graduate School on UM-Flint campus. She is a Lecturer IV in Theatre Management, primarily teaching Stage Management, Production Management, and Arts Administration. Nicole is also the Director of Production for Nicely Theatre Group in Detroit. Before working at the university, Nicole was the Production Manager and Technical Director for BoarsHead Theatre. In 2005 she received her MFA in Production Technology Management from the Carnegie Mellon School of Drama. Other companies she has worked with include Flint Youth Theatre, Shop Floor Theatre Company, Unicorn Theatre, and Michigan Shakespeare Festival.

Andy Deck
Andy Deck is a media artist specializing in participative online media. Deck co-founded the environmental arts collective Transnational Temps, which has extensively used online media in its global efforts to disseminate Earth Art for the 21st century™ through ground-breaking exhibitions like ECOMEDIA Ecological Strategies in Today’s Art.  The collective has also conducted youth-focused workshops that address environmental awareness in the urban context. Before coming to UM-Flint, he taught in the U.S. and abroad in schools like New York University and the graduate program at the School of Visual Arts. His work has been featured in the Artport of the Whitney Museum of American Art and at the Tate Online in the United Kingdom. He has received numerous grants and commissions and has been included in major exhibitions of Net Art such as net_condition at the Media Art Museum in Karlsruhe, Germany.

Christian Gerstheimer
Christian Gerstheimer is an artist, curator, and educator based in Michigan. He lived in El Paso from 2003 to 2019 and was a curator at the El Paso Museum of Art for fourteen years. He has taught drawing and art history classes at the University of Texas at El Paso, and currently teaches art history at UM-Flint.

His artwork has been exhibited in Berlin, New York, Chicago, Flint, Detroit and El Paso, TX, and is often presented as public interventions because site, context and social engagement are important factors. His practice seeks to raise awareness about the struggle of immigrants and immigration laws through interventions; performances and sculptural installations. His on-going November Project has become more oriented toward social justice and precarity since 2012 as well as increasingly utilizing new, digital media. Whether kinetic, video or assemblage Gerstheimer’s practice speaks the truth to power for the exploited in the US, Mexico and beyond. Gerstheimer earned a B.A. degree in Humanities Interdisciplinary, and an M.A. degree in Art History from Michigan State University, a BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and an MFA in Creative Practice from the Transart Institute with Plymouth University.

Guluma Gemeda
Dr. Guluma Gemeda earned his BA and MA degrees from Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia, and his Ph.D. from Michigan State University. Before joining UM-Flint, Dr. Gemeda taught at Addis Ababa and Northern Michigan Universities.  At UM-Flint, he teaches African and African American history. In his scholarship, he specializes in the social and economic history of Northeast Africa, particularly on land and farming communities in Ethiopia. He has conducted research in Ethiopia and at national archives in the United Kingdom and the United States. Recently, he has also been researching the Sea Islands of South Carolina, in the United States. Dr. Gemeda has published several articles and book chapters. His recent publications include: ‘The Rise of Coffee and the Demise Imperial Autonomy: The Oromo Kingdom of Jimma and Political Centralization in Ethiopia,’ in Contested Terrain, ed. by Ezekiel  Gebissa (Trenton, Red Sea Press, 2009) and ‘Land, Agriculture and Social Class Formation in the   Gibe Region, From the mid-nineteenth century to 1936’,  in State, Land, and Society in the History of Sudanic  Africa, ed. by Donald Crummey (Trenton, NJ., Red Sea Press, 2005).  Currently, he is completing a manuscript on the history of coffee in Ethiopia.

Thomas Henthorn
Thomas Henthorn serves as the Wyatt Endowed Professor of Public History in the Department of History. His research explores the intersection of urban and public history, specifically focusing on Flint, Michigan. Dr Henthorn leads efforts in his department in civic engagement and has developed partnerships with organizations in Flint and across the state. His current projects include an exploration of local cemeteries and an examination of heritage and urban development in Flint in the mid-twentieth century.

Gabriela Hristova, DMA
Dr. Gabriela Hristova is Associate Professor of Music and Director of Choral Activities at UM-Flint Department of Music. She conducts the University Chorale and Chamber Singers, and teaches courses in choral and instrumental conducting and music performance. Dr. Hristova is the director and conducting faculty of the Department of Music’s Summer Vocal Academy of Music – a summer day camp for middle and high school students widely-recognized for its high level of vocal music instruction. Dr. Hristova is a passionate performer, educator, adjudicator, and guest clinician of choral events throughout the Midwest. She has worked with choirs of all ages, both professional and amateur. Her research focuses at UM-Flint on Bulgaria’s Choral Traditions and Choral Music. She has also collaborated as an editor of the first Bulgarian Art Song Anthology published in the United States. Additionally, she connects her classroom teaching with research on repertoire planning and concert programming, and conducting gestures for effective non-verbal communication in rehearsal and performance. Dr. Hristova earned the Master of Music in Conducting and Doctor of Musical Arts in Choral Conducting degrees from the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor. She received the Bachelor’s degree in Music Education and Choral Conducting from the State Academy of Music in her native country of Bulgaria.

Colleen Marquis
Colleen is the Archivist for the Genesee Historical Collections Center. She regularly contributes to the Genesee Historical Society’s publications and sits on the Whaley Historic House Museum board. Her research interests center around labor history, archives as the locus of shared community memory, and audio/video digitization. Today she lives in the College Cultural Neighborhood with her young daughter, husband, two cats, dog, and a growing number of unread books.

Shelby Newport
Shelby Newport is a Costume & Makeup Designer based in Michigan. She is the Associate Provost and Dean of Undergraduate Studies at UM-Flint, where she also serves as an Associate Professor of Theatre. Shelby received her MFA from Purdue University in 2009 and her undergraduate degree from Cornell College. She has worked at a number of regional theaters including the Colorado Shakespeare Festival, Great River Shakespeare Festival, and Glimmerglass Opera.

Rebecca Zeiss
Rebecca Zeiss was born and raised, except for four years in Belgium as a teen, and still lives in Midland, Michigan. She received her BFA from the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, where, as a painting and drawing major, she had the opportunity to study under photographer and educator Phil Davis, causing her to switch the focus of her work to photography. She continued experimenting with photographic surfaces and mixed media and received her MFA in photography from Central Michigan University. She is now teaching photography and printmaking at UM-Flint.