Local exhibition event will honor the history of Detroit’s punk scene

Punk Fashion Symposium organizers Leslie Ann Pilling and Rob St. Mary join CultureShift to talk about the importance of trust, community and self-expression in punk.

Leslie Ann Pilling and Rob St. Mary smile in front of the WDET logo.

Punk Fashion Symposium organizers Leslie Ann Pilling (left) and Rob St. Mary (right) in the WDET studios.

The Metropolitan Museum of Design Detroit is hosting an event that celebrates the city’s intersection of punk, fashion and art.

detroitUNDERGROUND 69 is a multi-month-long exhibition honoring the city’s first-wave punk scene and its huge aesthetic influence, which can still be felt today far outside its origins as a DIY, raw and rough-looking youth-driven culture.

As part of this exhibition, there will be a Punk Fashion Symposium on Wednesday, September 28 at 7:30 p.m. Leslie Ann Pilling, Founder and President of MM-O-DD and Rob St. Mary, Detroit journalist, author and historian of the city’s punk and alternative media join CultureShift to talk about the history of Detroit’s punk scene and how the event will honor it.

“Sometimes we’d have a few of pieces underneath our clothing, and then take those conservative outer pieces off and reveal what we actually were. We were punk. We didn’t go around and saying we were punk. We just were.” – Leslie Ann Pilling, Metropolitan Museum of Design Detroit.


Listen: Event organizers discuss the importance of trust, community and self-expression in punk.

 

Photo credit: Tia Graham/WDET.

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Authors

  • Amanda LeClaire
    Amanda LeClaire is an award-winning host and producer of CultureShift on 101.9 WDET-FM Detroit’s NPR station. She’s a founding producer of WDET’s flagship news talk show Detroit Today, and a former host/reporter for Arizona Public Media. Amanda is also an artist, certified intuitive and energy healer, and professional tarot reader.
  • Sophia Jozwiak
    Sophia Jozwiak is the Digital Content and Communities Assistant for 101.9 WDET.