CREATORS ON CAMPUS
Creative
Careers
Residency
The Creative Careers Residency is a transitional program providing support for full-time, self-directed creative practice in architecture, art and design, performing arts, intermedia arts, or creative writing.
While pursuit of an advanced degree in a creative practice provides support, structure, and most importantly, the time necessary to develop and execute creative work, after graduation many practitioners lose these networks of support necessary to develop significant work, posing a significant barrier to the transition from degree to sustained work. The Creative Careers Residency seeks to reduce these barriers to creative practice post-graduation, by providing the time, structure, and funding support to transition from academia to post graduate endeavors.
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To provide transitional support for creative artists, parallel to the scaffolding typical of academic disciplines, to assist graduates in their transition from “graduate student” to “creative professional.”
To foster the continued artistic growth of recent graduates by allowing them to practice their artistic discipline full-time.
To set up U-M graduates of creative disciplines for success in a deep creative practice by providing the infrastructure of support necessary to do so.
Reduce barriers to artists without generational wealth to develop sustainable careers as artists.
To increase the presence of and interactions with artists-in-residence across campus.
To support early career creative practitioners as a bridge to the next tier of artist residencies
PAST COHORTS
2025–2026
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Willie Cornish, Jr. is a 2024 Master of Fine Arts graduate of the School of Music, Theatre & Dance.
South Carolina native Willie Cornish, Jr. (b. 2000) is an avid interdisciplinary collaborator and composer who creates music for film, video games, concerts, electronics, and education. His works have been performed nationwide by ensembles such as the U.S. Air Force Band and, more recently, a Lincoln Center premiere by the What is Noise Chamber Ensemble. Outside of composition, Cornish enjoys journaling, teaching, and caring for his family of plants.
cyclecyclecycle is a 30-minute production that combines dance, live music, and fashion design to showcase transformation and the cyclical evolution of the soul, being a lifelong process, not a single event.
williecornishjr.com
instagram/tiktok: @wcjrmusic
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Abigail Lowe is a 2024 Master of Fine Arts graduate of the Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design.
Lowe is a visual artist whose practice integrates drawing, sculptural installation, and theatrical design. She earned her BA from Grinnell College in 2015 and her MFA from the Stamps School of Art & Design in 2024. Lowe has held residencies at the Penland School of Craft ('22), Vermont Studio Center ('25), and the Arts Initiative at the University of Michigan ('25–'26). Her work has been recognized by the Jean Paul Slusser MFA Thesis Award ('24) and the Smucker Wagstaff Graduate Award ('22, '23). She currently serves as Senior Designer for the Creative Campus Voting Project.
Five Soliloquies for Ophelia is a folkloric retelling of Hamlet from Ophelia’s perspective — a journey into a world where the veil between the living and the dead has torn. Ophelia’s story unfolds in five vignettes; each soliloquy is embodied by a life-size puppet that opens to reveal an interior populated by miniature landscapes, sculptural tableaux, and flickering animations. Small audiences are invited to experience this phantasmagoria through headphone-audio synced to a live performance and brought to life by pre-cinema magic.
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Sahara Sidi is a 2024 Master of Fine Arts in Poetry graduate from the Helen Zell Writers Program.
Sidi will develop a chapbook that calls upon the long tradition of musical forms in elegiac poetry.
In collaboration with local poets and musicians, Sidi will feature excerpts of their chapbook during a transdisciplinary performance that conveys the all-too-human experience of love and loss.
2024–2025
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Leah Crosby is a 2024 Master of Fine Arts graduate from the Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design.
Crosby will create a serialized experimental audio work and accompanying chapbook or zine that draws on research on identity co-formation within caregiving relationships.The audio will be released serially via WBCN, Ann Arbor’s community radio station, culminating in a final live performance of the entire audio series at the Ann Arbor District Library, where the companion chapbook will be distributed. The remaining chapbooks will be distributed in vintage vending machines installed on campus.
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sara faraj is a 2024 Master of Urban and Regional Planning graduate from Taubman College.
faraj will facilitate Photovoice workshops for marginalized individuals, groups and organizations, which include photography training, ethical considerations of photography, direction and narrative development through reflection and collaborative activities.Participants will develop “voices” accompanying their images to shed light on their photographs and stories. The project includes workshops, a report outlining the methodology and research findings, and a public exhibit showcasing the power of Photovoice.
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Kara Roseborough is a Master of Fine Arts in Dance graduate from the School of Music, Theatre & Dance.
Roseborough will develop a Motown ballet La Vie en Rose, which chronicles the journey of a small-town Black waitress with dreams of dancing in New York City. The piece examines issues of race and gender as they pertain to an artist’s journey and incorporate the history of Black people in southeast Michigan.
In collaborating with local musicians, Roseborough will reconfigure the work to be set entirely to new and existing Motown-inspired songs to situate the ballet further within the local Black community.
2023–2024
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Caroline Harper New is a 2022 Master of Fine Arts graduate of LSA and fellow in the Helen Zell Writers Program.
Her main goal—to complete a poetry book manuscript that integrates image and text. Archives of Extinction documents legends from the Georgia-Florida region of the United States in the form of poetry.The goal of this project was to interrogate concepts of extinction—species, stories and love—in a way that highlights webs of dependency in this ecological region and contributes unheard local perspectives to the rhetoric on climate change. Her project also seeks to create a narrative installation where the public can engage with intersections of poetry and art experientially.
An experimental film, a collection of sculptures, and a series of sketches imagines new forms of life from remnants of destruction, inspired by the imagination of sea and swamp creatures.
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Michelle Inez Hinojosa is a 2023 Master of Fine Arts graduate of the Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design.
Hinojosa installed art interventions on windows in high-traffic areas around the U-M campus in order to bring joyful color into university buildings while also creating space and representation for Latinx students who can often feel “othered” in large, primarily white universities.
This sense of othering can be tied to language differences, immigration status, financial pressures and many other factors. These artworks referenced quilting and textiles from across Central and South America to bring a sense of warmth and home for Latinx students into spaces that can often feel unwelcome and stressful.
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Madeline Merwin is a 2023 Master of Music graduate of the School of Music, Theatre & Dance.
The culmination of Merwin’s work was a full-length symphonic ballet, incorporating artists in the music, dance and stage performance spheres where she can write and perform a full, large-scale interdisciplinary collaborative piece, working with many artists and creative connections through her master’s program.