Launched in response to the growing crisis of narrative infrastructure, the Detroit River Story Lab is a collaborative, public-facing initiative that leverages the sociocultural, economic, and ecological centrality of the Detroit River corridor to reimagine it as an urban case study in narrative placemaking and civic renewal.

Beginning with the premise that place-based storymaking is vital to sustaining democratic values and community capacity for self-determination, the Lab partners on projects designed to support the narrative capacities of local urban communities through the story-telling channels of community journalism, place-based education, and public history.

The Story Lab co-designs scalable interventions to strengthen community-based forms of narrative infrastructure. Participants draw upon archives and oral histories to document previously marginalized narratives centering the river. Drawing on this research, we prototype new approaches to place-based learning, within the university and beyond, to expand the publics involved in the production and circulation of local narratives of identity and urban memory.