Detroit River Story Lab

The University of Michigan’s Detroit River Story Lab is an interdisciplinary, grant-funded initiative that partners with regional organizations to reconnect communities with the river and its stories.

Through collaborative research, educational programs, and engagement projects, our partnerships amplify marginalized voices and foreground the role of the river and its shores as sites of connection, stewardship, and healing.

Projects and Resources

Our Partners

About the Story Lab

Project Areas

The Story Lab focuses on three overlapping components of narrative infrastructure along the Detroit River corridor. In each of these project areas, we work alongside partner organizations to help gather, contextualize, and share out river-related stories in ways that align with community priorities and activate riverside locations.

Place-Based Education

Local Heritage

Community Journalism

Featured Projects

Detroit River Skiff & Schooner Program

Detroit Historical Society, Educational Programs, Featured Projects, Inland Seas Education Association, Michigan Department of Natural Resources, Place-Based Education, Teacher Resources, Wright Museum

A hands-on learning program that connects local youth with the cultural and environmental heritage of the river through tall-ship sailing and boat-building experiences.
Detroit River Youth Career Expo

Conferences, Detroit Historical Society, Educational Programs, Featured Projects, Inland Seas Education Association, Local Events, Michigan Department of Natural Resources, Oral History, Place-Based Education, Wright Museum

A hands-on exploration of water-linked education and career pathways, for Metro-Detroit youth (15-25) along with their teachers and families. Lunch provided! April 12, 2025 from 10am-3pm.
The Detroit River Beat

Articles, Community Journalism, Featured Projects

The Story Lab sponsors student internships with nonprofit news organizations, such as Bridge Detroit, Planet Detroit, and Detroit Public Television, to assist thinly stretched staff in the coverage of river-related stories and works with partners to develop new local training opportunities, on campus and in the community, for both student and citizen journalists.
Detroit River Stories Podcast

Community Journalism, Featured Projects, Oral History, Teacher Resources

A student-produced podcast series featuring interviews with local residents about their relationships with the Detroit River.
Gala Library

Featured Projects, Learning Materials, Place-Based Education, Teacher Resources

A library of three interactive, STEM-focused curricular modules, designed for high school and college students, take the Detroit River as an accessible and engaging case study for learning about carbon emissions, data visualization, and scientific communication.
Digital Mapping Project

Featured Projects, Local Heritage, Visualizations

An interactive collection of historical and digital maps allowing you to explore the Detroit River Corridor through time.
Lives of Leisure and Labor on the Detroit River

Featured Projects, Local Heritage, Teacher Resources, Visualizations

An interactive essay exploring the experiences of those who built, maintained, and traveled on Detroit River steamboats at the turn of the 20th century, with special attention to key events in local labor and racial history and the ways they reflected shifting social and political attitudes of the time.
Detroit River Corridor Carbon Emissions Visualization Tool

Featured Projects, Place-Based Education, School at Marygrove, Visualizations

Designed in consultation with history and environmental studies teachers at regional high schools, this multi-layered, interactive ArcGIS map draws on dozens of public data sources to create a comprehensive greenhouse gas emissions inventory for the Detroit River.
Resistance on the River Curriculum

Detroit River Project, Featured Projects, Learning Materials, Place-Based Education, Teacher Resources

An extensive collection of learning materials and lesson plans that engages middle school students with the history of anti-slavery and anti-racist organizing along the Detroit River corridor.
100 Years Ago, Today

Community Journalism, Featured Projects, Oral History

An ongoing collection of stories gathered from historical newspapers from the 18th–20th centuries, pertaining to the rich history of the Detroit River and its surrounding communities.
People, Place, & Things

Community Journalism, Featured Projects, Oral History

People, Place, & Things is an ongoing collection of stories about Belle Isle and the impact it has on those who visit and nurture it. Each month, we’ll post tales of people whose lives have been transformed, those who have found healing, community, and spiritual renewal through their connection to this unique place.
The Detroit River and the University of Michigan

Featured Projects, Learning Materials, Local Heritage, Teacher Resources

An illustrated history of the many-layered connections between U-M and the region’s defining waterway dating back to the university’s founding in the early 19th century, just a few blocks from the river’s edge.