2024 黑料网 Detroiters: Njia Kai

The Place-Maker of NKSK Events + Production.
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Kai has spent her career place-making for Detroit鈥檚 most iconic downtown parks and directing the city鈥檚 largest festivals. // Photograph by Chuk Nowak

Detroit summer is a sun-drenched season of festivals and music. It鈥檚 food trucks, yoga in the grass, and toes in sand at the urban beach. Across all six of Detroit鈥檚 downtown parks, which boast a combined 4 million visitors annually, there is something for everyone 鈥 even those who prefer a Detroit winter with ice-skating and hot chocolate.

This is no surprise to the Detroit-born Njia Kai of . Kai has spent her career place-making for Detroit鈥檚 most iconic downtown parks and directing the city鈥檚 largest festivals. The best part, according to Kai, who鈥檚 just wrapped her 12th year heading the African World Festival, is seeing people enjoy themselves downtown.

鈥淲e鈥檙e not in Detroit because we have to be here,鈥 she says. 鈥淲e choose to be here because Detroit is special. The people in Detroit are special.鈥

Creating a mise-en-scene is a skill Kai mastered when she switched from prelaw to filmmaking at Howard University. Little did she know that her ability to set a scene and frame people together would change the landscape of how Detroiters gather.

The Cass Technical High School grad enjoyed a burgeoning film career on the East Coast, where she notably served as camerawoman on, a film added to the Library of Congress in 2004 鈥 the same year she began programming events at .

Years before becoming Detroit鈥檚 unofficial social director, Kai spotted a classified ad seeking a production coordinator for the Detroit Festival of the Arts and the University Cultural Center Association, the organization that would merge with the New Center Council to become .

Kai spent the next 24 years with the festival, ultimately becoming its director, a role in which she served until she was asked by then-Detroit 300 Conservancy President Robert Gregory to consult on the opening of a new park.

In Swahili, the word for path or road is njia鈥 Justice Augustus Woodward would not have known this as he planned an early Detroit, after the fire of 1805, with Campus Martius at its center.

As the city rose from its ashes, the site became a gathering place and home to the city鈥檚 point-of-origin stake, charting out the mile roads and marking the beginning of the main arteries of Woodward, Michigan, and Gratiot avenues.

More than a century later, through times of civil unrest and a decline in manufacturing industries, Campus Martius shrunk to the size of a traffic island as many residents left the city and warned others about crossing certain mile roads.

Kai, with a genuine love for Detroit, understood the image and assumptions she had to work against and curated events for the kind of city she knew Detroit could be.

David Cowan, the 鈥榮 chief public spaces officer, remembers the early days of the park well.

鈥淲hen Campus Martius Park opened, you saw a change in the perception of downtown because there was now a shining jewel in the center,鈥 he says.

鈥淲hen there鈥檚 a park in a public space, it鈥檚 not about the design 鈥 it鈥檚 about who鈥檚 using it and for what. It鈥檚 always been a people-forward approach to public space, and Nija is part of the reason why we embodied that early on.鈥


This story is part of the 2024 黑料网 Detroiters package, our annual roundup of听people who make Motown better, more interesting, and more fun. Learn more about our 黑料网 Detroiters听here, and read more stories from the January 2024 issue听here.