Ecology.
Beauty.
Joy.

Brightside reimagines cities from the soil up – transforming everyday spaces into vibrant, life-giving places where people & nature flourish together.

Aerial view of Detroit skyline with buildings and roads.

Founded in Detroit, our team of community stewards, designers, & researchers is cultivating a new civic ecology.

Guided by beauty and joy, rooted in care, shaped by science and imagination, and grown with collective well-being and abundance.

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People planting small trees in a garden, focusing on a person wearing gloves placing a sapling into the soil.

We work in the in-between spaces — where concrete meets soil, practice informs policy, transformation reveals beauty, and story brings knowledge to life.

In these places of overlap and opportunity, we help neighbors, organizations, and institutions reimagine what’s possible – and connect them to the ideas, tools, and collaborators to make it real. Because at Brightside, we believe that when small, thoughtful actions take root across neighborhoods, they can grow into something extraordinary.

Why Brightside

What We Do

We’re visionaries, place-makers, idea-weavers, and system-shifters.

As a bridge between people and places, Brightside connects communities to the solutions, collaborators, and ideas that make transformation possible. Through accessible, ecologically informed design, joyful collaboration, and rooted creativity, we activate urban spaces – and the people who care for them. From lawns and lots to schoolyards, churchyards, and city corridors, we integrate art, ecology, and opportunities for people to move, connect, and spend time with the land. Our work spans:

Place-Based Projects

We co-create pollinator pathways, microforests, green corridors, and living streetscapes in partnership with community.
Stewardship Activation

We help people rethink their land not as isolated plots, but as part of a shared ecological fabric – through joyful, accessible, and replicable models.
Network Building

We convene civic, cultural, and community partners to align ideas, resources, and land around transformation.
Ideas in Partnership

We shape ideas with community, culture, and science – expanding what’s possible for cities, policies, and place.
Public Learning & Imagination

We bridge the gap between people and place by designing spaces that invite learning through signage, storytelling, and accessible ecological design – we make nature knowable so that anyone can see, learn from, and grow with the land around them.