March 2025 | SWF Communiversity Convergence in Detroit

On March 27th - 29th, SWF team members traveled to Detroit, Michigan, for a 3-day Communiversity Convergence with Detroit-based Values-Based Partners. The Convergence started Thursday evening with a shared reflection on What Time Is It On The Clock of the World?, followed by a Build-It Workshop and work day on Friday at Feedom Freedom Growers. The Convergence closed with a tour of Freedom Dreams and a workshop about practices shared across Values-Based Partner sites on Saturday. 

This is the third annual Communiversity Convergence in Detroit – an early spring ritual of critical connections and community building. We invite you to learn more about the Detroit Convergence. 

SWF and Detroit Values-Based Partners

For more than a decade, SWF and Detroit-based partners, including Freedom Dreams, Feedom Freedom Growers, Birwood House, and Open Works have cultivated values-based partnerships. Collectively anchored by the vision and practice of James and Grace Lee Boggs, who challenged people around them through their actions and speeches/writings to be a “Solutionary” — to think and do, to develop and steward solutions that address the multi-layered problems facing our world on a human scale and over time. 

Collectively, SWF and Detroit Values-Based Partners have worked together to secure and steward public land and resources, grow human infrastructure,  build new physical infrastructure, and develop shared research about parallels and translations between each partner’s site, history, strategies, and tactics. The Communiversity Convergence in March built on and grew critical connections through shared labor, resources, and discussion across Values-Based Partners.

COMMUNIVERSITY CONVERGENCE IN DETROIT | DAY 1 + 2

The Convergence launched on Thursday evening with Detroit Values-Based Partners hosting neighbors and the SWF team for a shared meal and discussion anchored in three of James  and Grace Lee Boggs writings on, “What Time is it on the Clock of the World Right Now?”, “Thinking Dialectically, Not Biologically,” and “The Next Development is Education.” Each attendee shared their perspective on what work is most critical in this moment. SWF Executive Director Emmanuel closed the discussion by reflecting on the pressing current challenge: how to maintain cohesion and do collective work through an active process of rigor and imagination, while breaking down misperceptions to create a tangible new reality. 

Day two of the Conversion brought Values-Based Partners from Birwood House, Freedom Dreams, SWF, along with SWF RND Research and Design Intern from the University of Michigan and Detroit neighbors together to refresh key spaces at Feedom Freedom Growers on Detroit’s East Side. Myrtle Thompson Curtis, co-founder of Feedom Freedom Growers, opened the day reflecting on 15 years of growing at the same site and the roots of the values-based partnership between SWF and Feedom Freedom Growers, which has continued to sow new seeds, knowledge, techniques, and infrastructure. 

The 20-person group split into three groups to tackle hoop house repairs, removal of grapevines to make room for additional crops, and a Build-It workshop focused on  refreshing and organizing the CanDo – a shipping container turned greenhouse and storage space – by building storage modules for hand tools and other inventory. 

Hoop house repairs and the Build-It Workshop echoed SWF’s winter flows at The Common|Wealth. In January, the SWF Team led the SWF Neighborhood Academy in recovering and repairing the Hoop Houses. Throughout January and February, across The Common|Wealth, the SWF team refreshed Modules –  a storage, inventory, and organization system. New Modules were designed, built, and installed in the basements of the Think-Do House and Civic Arts Church, and in the Farm Can and Farm Shed. Each of these actions were rehearsal for the Detroit Convergence.  

Working together over the course of one day at Feedom Freedom Growers, the team achieved their goals. The CanDo greenhouse was refreshed with additional shelving and other small repairs. 5 new Modules and French cleats were built and installed to organize hand tools, to expand the storage capacity in the CanDo. Initial repairs on the hoop house started and 21 grapevines and 21 eight-inch diameter, eight-foot poles – the infrastructure for the grapes – were uprooted and moved.  

By the end of the day, Feedom Freedom Growers site was refreshed for the 2025 Growing Season.

Common Practices Work-Shop | Freedom Dreams

On Saturday, the group convened at Freedom Dreams and the Robinson Center. The Freedom Dreams team led neighbors, SWF team members, and Detroit Values-Based Partners on a tour of the site, showing recent updates to the Makerspace in the Robinson Center, Carriage House, Meeting House, and the activation of their Shelf of Life indoor growing space. 

The group was joined virtually by SWF Team Members, for a regenerative discussion on common practices shared across the network. Like SWF, Freedom Dreams, Birwood House, and Feedom Freedom Growers use the Shelf of Life for regeneration and education. Freedom Dreams and Feedom Freedom Growers both start seedlings indoors for their 18 garden beds and for sharing with neighbors. 

Across the Network, SWF and Values-Based Partners reflected on how building shared infrastructure, along with shared relationships, and language have created a foundation upon which they can collaborate, build, and expand the network and collective impact. The Shelf of Life’s activation across several Values-Based Partners sites, including SWF, Freedom Dreams, Birwood House and Feedom Freedom Growers, creates a quantum unit of collaboration – a space for collective learning, experimentation, and translations across the network. 

The annual Communiversity Convergence in Detroit re-generated the shared relationships, language and infrastructure, creating an essential time and space for regeneration across the Values-Based Partners Network. 

There GROWS the neighborhood!