{"id":14747,"date":"2016-02-04T21:55:13","date_gmt":"2016-02-04T21:55:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/?p=14747"},"modified":"2016-02-04T21:55:13","modified_gmt":"2016-02-04T21:55:13","slug":"dear-berlin-were-poor-but-sexy-too-detroit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/dear-berlin-were-poor-but-sexy-too-detroit\/","title":{"rendered":"Dear Berlin:  \u201cWe\u2019re Poor, but Sexy\u201d too! \u2013Detroit"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-14750\" src=\"http:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/Detroit-People-Pic-300x213.jpg\" alt=\"Detroit People Pic\" width=\"300\" height=\"213\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/Detroit-People-Pic-300x213.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/Detroit-People-Pic-1024x726.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/Detroit-People-Pic-768x545.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/Detroit-People-Pic.jpg 1355w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/>Last week, my wonderful teacher and mentor, Reri Grist came to the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor (Go Blue!) to give a vocal masterclass to the current students there.<br \/>\nFor those of you who aren\u2019t familiar with Masterclasses; students prepare a song to sing in front of an audience, and then the \u201cMaster\u201d gives constructive feedback on style, language diction, and overall delivery. Masterclasses provide a great learning opportunity for everyone in the room, and they can be really fun too!<\/p>\n<p><em>*fun fact: The name \u201cBerlin\u201d is of Slavic origin, and was used to describe the city&#8217;s original landscape; low, marshy ground.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>It was especially wonderful to catch up with Professor Grist on this side of the pond (she lives in Germany), and we spent much of the weekend chatting about the projects I had been working on through the Challenge Detroit fellowship. My stories must have been convincing because the next thing I knew, we were speeding along 94 on our way to the City. \u201cDetroit is similar to Berlin\u201d, I began, knowing that Berlin was a city she was familiar with: \u201cpioneers in the creation of techno music, underpopulated but on the rise, a hub for innovative start-ups, full of talented artists, pretty flat in geography, and thus, if I may, we\u2019re also <em>\u201cpoor but sexy\u201d<\/em>.<br \/>\nTogether, we admired Detroit\u2019s beautiful skyline, the architecture of the buildings, and\u00a0its many, many churches and theatres. We drove downtown DIA to learn about the latest exhibits, passed the Detroit Opera House, through Midtown to see the Motown Museum and my workplace at Detroit Future City, and then took a detour to see some of the neighborhoods surrounding the city center.<br \/>\nWe concluded: Detroit is a little microcosm of the world; with eminent poverty in the midst of an up and coming bustling city.<br \/>\nShowing Grist around the city was incredibly fun, and it also reminded why I am here; to be an ambassador for the City and to advocate for the equity of its people. To uplift those who have weathered the storms, because they too have place in Detroit\u2019s present and undoubtedly bright future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last week, my wonderful teacher and mentor, Reri Grist came to the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor (Go Blue!) to give a vocal masterclass to the current students there. For those of you who aren\u2019t familiar with Masterclasses; students prepare a song to sing in front of an audience, and then the \u201cMaster\u201d gives [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":161,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,12,19],"tags":[454,455,100],"class_list":["post-14747","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-livedetroit","category-playdetroit","category-detroit","tag-detroitoperahouse","tag-showdetroit","tag-dia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14747","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/161"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14747"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14747\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14747"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14747"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14747"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}