Michelle Perron, a cultural leader who has helped shape Detroit’s creative economy for more than three decades, has launched Perron Projects, a strategic advisory practice that helps organizations use arts and culture to strengthen their identity, deepen engagement, and create long-term value.
The firm is now accepting clients across Metro Detroit and beyond.
Perron Projects works at an intersection few advisors occupy: the meeting point of curatorial expertise and executive strategy. Most consultants come from either the business world or the arts world. Perron Projects bridges both — pairing museum-caliber artistic judgment with the financial and strategic fluency to align cultural investment with organizational goals and measurable outcomes.
“Arts and culture offer something few other strategies can: authentic identity, meaningful engagement, and lasting connections with employees, clients, and communities,” says Perron. “But too often culture is treated as decoration — an afterthought rather than a strategy. When it is deployed with rigor and intention, it becomes one of the most powerful tools an organization has. Perron Projects exists to make that case and to deliver on it.”
Though newly launched as an independent practice, Perron Projects is already at work with clients. Among them is ArtOps, where Perron is guiding the organization’s board and staff through a significant leadership transition.
Perron’s launch comes as Detroit continues to draw national attention for its cultural vitality and creative economy — a story her own career has been bound up in.
Her career started in Detroit’s cultural organizations in the 1980s and took her to New York in the 1990s — directing development for the Merce Cunningham Dance Foundation and leading the influential Art et Industrie gallery in SoHo — before she returned home, where she has spent the past 28 years shaping the region’s cultural landscape.
She is best known as the founder of Kresge Arts in Detroit, the fellowship and awards program she designed and built for The Kresge Foundation to invest directly in the region’s artists. Under her leadership, the program has distributed more than $10 million in unrestricted support to more than 500 Detroit-area artists, creating an equity-centered model that has been studied and adapted by peer institutions across the country.
Earlier in her career, Perron grew the cultural footprint of the College for Creative Studies from a single public gallery into a five-venue exhibition and public programming division, tripling programmatic output and raising $16 million for the College. As director of the executive office at The Kresge Foundation, she worked with the president, board of trustees, and senior leadership on strategic priorities for the $150 million-plus national philanthropy and conceived and led the foundation’s centennial celebration at the Detroit Institute of Arts — an evening featuring President Barack Obama and a dozen live performances that was later broadcast as a PBS primetime special.
“Detroit taught me that culture isn’t a luxury — it’s infrastructure,” Perron says. “This is a city that understands how art can hold a community together, tell its story, and imagine its future. I’ve spent my career helping institutions here harness that power, and Perron Projects lets me bring that work to organizations of every kind.”
The practice offers customized engagements across four integrated areas:
Cultural Strategy — Vision and positioning, opportunity identification, strategic frameworks, and alignment with mission and audience.
Programs + Partnerships — Program development, artist and partner identification, collaboration design, and public engagement concepts.
Art & Space Integration — Public art frameworks, artist selection and commissioning, collaboration with architects and designers, and site-responsive concepts.
Strategic Advisory — Confidential leadership advisory, board and leadership facilitation, navigating transitions or reinvention, and stakeholder alignment.
Across her career, Perron has curated more than 300 exhibitions and experiential events, produced hundreds of public programs, and secured millions of dollars through fundraising and partnerships. Engagements are structured around three models: project-based work with defined deliverables, ongoing retainer advisory, and longer-term strategic partnerships.
Perron Projects is now accepting clients across Metro Detroit and beyond.
To learn more, visit perronprojects.com or contact Michelle Perron at michelle@perronprojects.com.
