DLECTRICITY Sites #3 and 4: The Wayne State Welcome Center and Woodward | Warren Greenspace

The cultural center of Detroit is the heart of DLECTRICITY. Through light, art, and imagination, the festival brings together the renowned institutions that congregate in Midtown. Wayne State University—the city’s primary public research university—is one of our integral partners to this connection. For each DLECTRICITY festival, the university offers up its architecture for creative transformation and its open spaces for artful conception. The Wayne State Welcome Center and the Woodward | Warren Greenspace have never failed to provide DLECTRICITY installations with room for interaction and potential.

Wayne State University embraces the fact that its Detroit campus gives students and faculty a college experience like no other. Its location in Midtown fosters connections among community organizations, institutions, local businesses, and long-time residents. The university’s commitment to arts and culture in the city has been “Warrior Strong” since 1968. We are happy to have Wayne State’s support in transforming the Midtown landscape into a light-art wonderland!

The Wayne State Welcome Center is situated on the corner of Woodward and Warren Avenue, and the Woodward | Warren Greenspace sits directly across from it to the south. The Welcome Center’s inviting indoor space has in the past hosted a sculptural media work by Polish-based nieDAsie Art Group. The audience could sit inside for an intimate experience with the installation, or view from the sidewalk thanks to the building’s sleek, mostly-glass design. So much can be done with the architecture and space of the Welcome Center building—vellum can cover the windows, projections can display on the glass panels, or a light-based performance can take place indoors!

The Woodward | Warren Greenspace has provided some of the most animating moments of past DLECTRICITY festivals. From Star Wars reenactments to immersive architectural structures, the park has been able to accommodate multiple large-scale projects at once or make room for scheduled programming. Past artists and groups that have exhibited here include DMet Design; Nicola Kuperus and Adam Miller; Bluewater Technologies, and the artist duo, Cuppetelli and Mendoza. In addition to the open space, DLECTRICITY artists can also use components of surrounding structures. The photo banner that typically shows Wayne State promotional imagery can for the festival be reversed and projected onto, making for an excellent and fairly large screen on Woodward Avenue.

We’re excited to see how artists and creators will light up these two spaces for DLCTRICITY 2020!