Toby Barlow                                                                    Mark Covington

My friend Susan talks a lot about the need to define community.  Take a look at this very short film clip – just under eight minutes long – which not many people have actually seen.  In a simple and profound way – it’s about a neighborhood in a place that many people have given up for dead.  It’s called “Detroit Lives – the Farmer and the Philosopher,” – I have never seen community better defined anywhere else.

The film begins with Toby Barlow who heads an ad agency in the motor city called Team Detroit.  Obvious question – would YOU build the name of a town with one of the worst images in the country into your brand?  For Toby – it was an easy decision.  “I’ve never worked in a city that has as many opportunities as I’ve seen in Detroit.  And I’ve never seen a place where there were as many communities of people who really wanted to make a place work.”

One of those communities is headed by Mark Covington – Chairman of the Georgia Street Community Collective.  Here’s where the film gets visually stunning – out of an urban neighborhood with deep problems including abandoned homes, crime and business failures – sits this beautiful, well tended garden filled with fresh vegetables, fruit and flowers.

For kids in the neighborhood, Mark says, it’s a great experience. “They’re finally able to see where their food comes from.  They can come down here at any time and pick an edible flower.”  He’s a “kid at heart,” he says.  “In some ways I’m living through them.  This garden really is a neighborhood gathering space.”

“(Detroit’s) canvass  can hold a lot of big ideas,” Toby says.  “There are dreamers in this city doing really interesting things.  The idea of a place without hope having hope is something people really want to hear.”  Hope really is a forerunner of faith someone once said – you just never know where hope and faith will show up.

What ties it all together?  Community Mark says.  “Mark Covington is Georgia Street.  I’m Michael Covington, Loraine Covington, Mrs. Boyd, Mrs Sims – these are the people that helped raise me.”  But that’s only part of a neighborhood.  “Right now I’m Chris, I’m Destiny, I’m Trebon, Mark Anthony, I’m Steven, Kevin – I’m the neighborhood.”

Maybe we’ve lost more than manufacturing in Michigan – maybe we’ve lost community and in loosing that we’ve lost a deep sense of our identity as human beings.  Could Detroit, my home town – of all the places in the world – be the spot where we find it again?