Michigan Central Art x Newlab Creative Residency
Advancing Creative Research, Innovation, and Practice
The Michigan Central x Newlab Residency is a pioneering program designed to bridge the gap between artistic inquiry, technological advancement, and entrepreneurial innovation. Developed in partnership with Newlab and funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, this residency situates creators at the nexus of Detroit’s revitalized innovation district, fostering research, exploration, and impact across disciplines.
Residency Overview
The Creative Residency provides artists, researchers, and creative practitioners resources and time to explore open questions, develop meaningful projects, and build sustainable practices. Artists work as active contributors in real-world innovation, civic, and health settings. This work fosters research and experimentation at the intersection of art, technology, and society.
The program provides multi-week fellowship residencies that offer fabrication tools, curatorial guidance, and technical collaboration for artists at critical moments in their practice. Divided into two complementary components, the residency program supports research excellence and community-driven creative entrepreneurship.
For 2026, Art & Technology and Art & Health Fellows will each receive:
- A $30,000 unrestricted prize to advance their project
- Onsite access to Michigan Central and Newlab’s facilities, including prototyping labs, digital tools, and a collaborative network
- One-on-one mentorship and peer engagement opportunities
Funded with generous support from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.
2026 Fellows
The 2026 Creative Residency Mentors include Devon Akmon, Nicolás Kisic-Aguirre, Nisha Sajnani, Erika Phillips, Amelia Winger-Bearskin, and Taeyoon Choi.
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Sabrina Nelson
Art + Health Fellow Sabrina Nelson is a Detroit-based interdisciplinary artist, educator, and “artivist” whose work spans painting, drawing, sculpture, installation, performance, and more. She has exhibited internationally, taught for decades at the College for Creative Studies and the Detroit Institute of Arts, and is the recipient of numerous honors including the Presidential Lifetime Achievement Award for Art and Activism.
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Chloe Pascal Crawford
Art + Health Fellow Chloe Pascal Crawford is a multidisciplinary artist whose work examines the devalued labor disabled people perform to be seen and exist in public space. She has exhibited at Museum MMK für Moderne Kunst, Artists Space, and the John Michael Kohler Arts Center, and currently teaches at Michigan State University.
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Osman Khan
Art + Tech Fellow Osman Khan is a Detroit-based multidisciplinary artist and professor at the University of Michigan’s Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design whose installations and site-specific interventions explore identity, homeland, and diasporic community. His work has been shown internationally, and he is a Guggenheim Fellow and recipient of honors including an Ars Electronica Prix Award of Distinction and an Art Matters grant.
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Cyrah Dardas
Art + Tech Fellow Cyrah Dardas is an eco-romantic artist living in Waawiyaatanong/Detroit whose practice is informed by her roles as a mother, educator, care worker, gardener, and member of artist cooperatives. Working across textiles, natural pigments, sculpture, and social practice, she explores grief, repair, collective healing, and more reciprocal relationships between people, place, and ecological systems.
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Maro Kariya
Art + Tech Fellow Maro Kariya is an audiovisual artist, scientist, and teacher whose work uses multimedia to explore environmental change and systems in need of transformation. Through sound, field recordings, scientific data, and synthetic composition, they create immersive installations and performances that translate chemical and ecological identities into sonic form.