Our Big Drawing was a collaborative, ephemeral project conducted with the Detroit neighborhood, Banglatown, in Summer 2018. In partnership with Power House Productions (PHP), Anne Elizabeth Moore and Melissa Mendes gathered a group of local participants—mostly youth, and mostly first- and second-generation immigrants from Bangladesh—to go on two walks through the neighborhood, separated by a period of a week.

The first “Walk & Draw” had nearly 30 participants and was focused on the past: What stories do we recall from the spaces where we commune? What do we want to remember about what we have been through? How do our memories line up with what we can see before us? Although participants ranged in age from 6 to 15, these questions were politicized by the largely Muslim community, and raised immediate issues about city infrastructure and access to resources. The second “Walk & Draw” attracted 20-25 participants and focused on the future: Now that we know what we want to preserve in our memories and in our drawings, what do we want to build toward? The answers to these questions were often very straightforward: Healthy food and places to gather, create, and feel safe topped the list.

In our final week, Mendes and Moore gathered the drawings and installed a mural on the front deck at Squash House, a PHP facility in the neighborhood. Our final gathering was an art exhibition, a chance for neighborhood participants to show off their accomplishments and celebrate with food and drink. More participatory drawings were created, both in and out of doors, all elaborating on the idea of a co-created vision of an ideal neighborhood. The title of the mural was proposed by a participant and put to a series of votes; lettering on the artists’ credit wall was created by Nishat Salim.

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This project was supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts.