Summary: By David Dower. Today I talk with Richard Newman, co-director with Liza Bielby of The Hinterlands Ensemble in Detroit. One of the things I love about this series is how it gives a mic to different ideas, aesthetic and geographic communities, and aspects of local and national infrastructure. This call goes in all of those directions and more. Richard was willing to talk to me at a very early hour, and I love the careful, considered way he connects his specific answers to my bigger picture questions. There has always been something unsettling to me about the broader brush with which the "creative class" conversation often paints. And my own generalized sense of what it means to speak of artists' impact on Detroit. Richard paints in micro-brush strokes—the specifics of his actual experience, and his actual neighborhood, and his actual company. It starts to create important detail and nuance to something many of...
