Grand prize Trice Clark won to open her Detroit creative space
Kraftologie just won the 2026 Comerica Hatch Detroit Contest by TechTown, taking home a 100,000 dollar grand prize plus a package of business support. Founder Trice Clark plans to use it to open a permanent creative learning space in Detroit's District 5.
If you don't know Kraftologie, it's a creative learning lab. Clark runs hands-on workshops, self-guided sessions, and take-home Kraft Kits that make art accessible to anyone at any skill level, from jewelry to woodworking. It's play with a purpose, the kind of place where a beginner can try something new without feeling behind.
The backstory is the heart of it. Clark started what became Kraftologie as “DIY Fridays” in her college apartment, ran her first public workshop back in 2014, and has spent more than a decade teaching craft across metro Detroit. She was driven by something personal: losing access to arts programming when she was young, and deciding to build the thing she wished she'd had.
"A city that lets the public pick who gets funded is a city building on its own taste."
Hatch Detroit has been running this contest since 2011, handing real money and support to one Detroit business idea a year and helping turn a plan into an open door. What makes it different is the vote. More than 30,000 people weighed in during the voting window, so the winner isn't just well-connected, it's wanted.
For a founder who spent twelve years teaching workshops in borrowed spaces, that combination is everything. The 100,000 dollars opens the door. The 30,000 people who voted for her walk through it. That's how a new space actually survives its first year, backed by a crowd that showed up before it even opened.
This is the unglamorous, essential work of building a city's small business base. One founder, one space, decided by the people who will actually use it. The builders ANF covers are so often exactly this: someone who spent years quietly doing the work before the city finally handed them the keys.
Detroit picked its own. Now Trice Clark gets to build it for good.