Detroit Artists Workshop

01 / The story of this place

Make time for these

The Detroit Artists Workshop was a cooperative of poets, jazz musicians and visual artists founded on November 1, 1964, by poet and activist John Sinclair together with his wife Leni Sinclair, saxophonist Charles Moore, Robin Eichele, George Tysh and about a dozen others, who pooled five dollars each for their first month's rent. It began in a storefront near Warren Avenue and the Lodge Service Drive, in the Cass Corridor neighborhood by Wayne State University, and grew into a cluster of about six cooperative houses in the area. The Workshop hosted readings, jazz sessions and an intermittent concert series that brought in Sun Ra and Charles Mingus, and it managed the early garage-rock band the MC5. Its influence rippled outward into Detroit's Cass Corridor arts scene, Kenny Cox's Strata Records, the Tribe collective and the Ann Arbor Blues and Jazz Festival, even as the collective itself wound down by the end of the 1960s.

1. Cooperative founded November 1, 1964, by John Sinclair, Leni Sinclair, Charles Moore and others
2. Began in a Cass Corridor storefront near Wayne State University, grew to about six houses
3. Hosted jazz and poetry events, including performances by Sun Ra and Charles Mingus
4. Early manager of the MC5
5. Influenced Detroit's Cass Corridor arts scene and Kenny Cox's Strata Records