Ginsberg Center E-Newsletter

Spring/Summer 2009

Art Professor Tobier Wins Award for Community Engagement
By Caroline Massad

U-M art and design students Tyrone Merrill (left) and Cassie McQuarter (right) make "Creative Collaborative Creatures" and "Mix Match Monsters" with students at Butzel Elementary School in Detroit. Merrill and McQuarter taught art classes at Butzel Elementary in a class led by Professor Nick Tobier. Photo by Salam Rida

University of Michigan Art and Design professor Nick Tobier received a national award this summer for his record of incorporating community outreach, service and involvement into his academic work.

The Ernest A. Lynton Award, given by the New England Resource Center for Higher Education (NERCHE), recognizes an untenured faculty member who not only collaborates with the non-academic community to solve problems through his or her work, but also makes community engagement integral to his or her teaching and research.

Tobier's work includes unconventional public exhibits and projects that directly address social problems. His students build 14-foot tall puppets for Ann Arbor's annual FestiFools parade—which Tobier and Lloyd Hall scholar Mark Tucker conceived—teach art in Detroit elementary schools, and in one class through the University's Global Intercultural Experience for Undergraduates (GIEU) program, turned a vacant lot in Detroit into an outdoor classroom while living with local families.

Tobier is involved with two Ginsberg Center programs: he serves on the Executive Committee for Arts of Citizenship, through which the Center helps arts and humanities faculty expand their public scholarship, and teaches in the Semester in Detroit program.

"Since he arrived in Michigan, Nick has worked to teach all of his courses in ways that integrate service and his creative ideas, and involve students and community members," Ginsberg Center Faculty Director Margaret Dewar said. "I cannot imagine what his work would be like without community engagement because it is so central to what he does."

Tobier said he tries to emphasize the role of artists "in the world" rather than "in the studio" in his teaching, and pushes his students to engage fully with the communities where they work.

"Creative education is an opportunity to learn how to communicate with the world, rather than an individual privilege," he said.

Through projects that have an unexpected twist, Tobier seeks to interrupt viewers' daily routines and encourage them to reflect on their assumptions about public space and public life. He has created elaborate, formal bus stops for out-of-the-way neighborhoods and, on cold days, served hot chocolate to passers-by from a lavishly upholstered cart.

Some of his work has also had a more direct impact. In 2004, he and a graduate art class helped residents of a neighborhood in Paramaribo, Suriname, design historical pamphlets and a walking tour. The city government later asked the UN to reconsider its decision to exclude that neighborhood from a world heritage site designation. Closer to home, Tobier has collaborated with residents of Detroit's East Side and the Capuchin Soup Kitchen, a local organization there, to create Field of Our Dreams, a mobile produce market that visits neighborhoods with few grocery stores.

"We're proud of Nick, and are also glad that this award shows that you can be recognized for making community engagement central to your scholarship—it's not just something to do on the side that might interfere with your academic work," Arts of Citizenship Associate Director Kamilah Henderson said.

Visit Nick Tobier's website.

Ginsberg Center E-Newsletter

Art Professor Tobier Wins Award for Community Engagement By Caroline Massad

Spring/Summer 2009 Table of Contents

Art Professor Tobier Wins Award for Community Engagement
By Caroline Massad