Renaissance City

Project Description

Renaissance City is an open-source platform built to serve Detroit's creative communities. It hosts events, artists, and artwork, while also functioning as a digital gallery and incentive layer for local engagement. Community members can:

• Check in at events to earn credits.
• Use credits to promote their own projects.
• Earn badges and POAPs that unlock exclusive experiences.
• Create posts, vote, and grow reputation based on real-world participation.

This software is deployed live in Detroit and currently used to organize events like Art Night, a nonprofit event series supporting local creators through blockchain-based tools, collaborative documentation, and reinvestment in community projects.

Key Impact Areas

• Local Public Good: Provides transparent community tools for event coordination, artist visibility, and creator compensation.
• Open Source: Licensed under an OSI-approved license with all contributions public on GitHub.
• Active Development: Recent commits show improvements in artist onboarding, POAP integration, and a voting system for events and projects.
• Live Adoption: Already being used for real events at Russell Industrial Center and other Detroit locations.

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Value to the Neighborhood

This project helps Detroit communities self-organize and elevate local talent. It documents and funds artistic projects, tracks participation with on-chain incentives, and reinvests in cultural output through a nonprofit ecosystem.

The work supports underfunded artists, community organizers, and creators—bridging digital tools with tangible community outcomes.

How the Grant Will Be Used (Retroactively)

Funds will support:

• Continued software maintenance and community onboarding.
• Paying contributors who helped develop the platform.
• Infrastructure costs (hosting, POAP issuance, etc.)
• Fund creator sessions (aka "Detroit style pizzas") to bring together local artists and developers.
• Nonprofit documentation and storytelling efforts.

Grants We're Pursuing

We're actively seeking support from these grant programs to help scale our impact:

• Cabin Fellowship - Neighborhood Open Source Software Grant (Closing April 16th!)

  Supporting software that helps neighborhoods and local communities thrive through digital tools.

• Gitcoin GG23 OSS - dApps and Apps (Closing April 16th!)

  A quadratic funding round on Arbitrum One with a 200,000 USDC matching pool to accelerate open source dApps and apps that enhance Web3 accessibility, usability, and contribute to financial inclusion, education, and social impact.

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