Transcript
Narrator 0:00
In 1977 Mayor William Hudnut hosted an awards ceremony to honor outstanding contributions to the development of culture and the arts in Indianapolis. In his opening address, he credited the momentum of Indy’s arts movement with shaping the city into a unique cultural destination. Yet he reminded the audience that while select individuals and organizations would be given formal recognition that evening Indy’s rapidly improving cultural image was, in his own words, the result of the efforts of 1000s of our citizens, creative artists, arts and cultural institutions, volunteers and businesses. At the Richard M. Fairbanks Symposium held at the University of Indianapolis on February 5, 2016, arts professionals and city leaders discussed how our city must continue these cooperative efforts by seeking connection, communication and integration through supportive partnerships and innovative arts strategies in order to further develop Indy’s identity as a cultural leader. Angel Ysaguirre, former Deputy Commissioner for the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events, started off the conversation by detailing some successful points of Chicago’s cultural plan, which included a focus on music, film, culinary arts and continuous communication between artists, arts organizations the city and the general public.
Angel Ysaguirre 1:19
In terms of the cultural plan, so the cultural planning process in Chicago was really fantastic. We held about 200 community conversations across the city, in wealthy neighborhoods, poor neighborhoods, to ask residents of Chicago what was most important to them in terms of in terms of the arts, and it was based on their suggestions that the city came up with its plan for how to engage with the with the city with a small c in terms of the arts. And it was actually through the cultural planning process that we learned that the number one reason besides business that people come to Chicago is architecture. We somehow never knew that, but we also learned about how many artists in Chicago live there because of the music scene, because of the film scene, and because of the culinary scene, up until that point, we never thought of culinary as an art form that the city was going to get behind. And so we learned these important things through the cultural planning process.
Narrator 2:35
Just as Ysaguirre attributes the successful crafting of Chicago’s cultural strategy to positive relationships between the city and the community, Scott Stulen of the Indianapolis Museum of Art speaks on the value of maintaining connections and effective communication between institutions, cities and individuals. Stulen discusses the Museum’s public programming, which centers on the goal of launching relationships and conversations between arts institutions and the community through the medium of accessible, innovative and relevant public art experiences.
Scott Stulen 3:05
We were lucky to have support from the Efroymson Family Fund to start ARTx, which is our research and development division the Museum, where we’re trying to figure out a bunch of these things about what the Museum needs to change to be relevant in the decades ahead. Because if we don’t change, and we’re not bringing more young audiences and really changing how we work, and being part of this conversation of people talking about 30 years from now, we’re gone. It really is that important to figure out how to adapt to this. So here’s some of the ways that we’re kind of doing that. And it’s thinking about again, like how we bring in, I think, younger audiences, and I will say, for like, our median age the museum younger audiences means under 50. But really thinking about how, and that’s there’s a sad truth to some of that. But really thinking about how we engage people a little bit differently. And some of it is when I came in as really simple little things, which can be prompts. It can be things like putting a hammock on the Art and Nature Park, putting a musician into the gallery that just indicates something is different happening here, or this is a place that you can stop and pause and do something more than just moving through and looking at work of art. That, of course, is part of the experience too, but that we could use it for other things. We started family days, finding ways we could bring in those audiences. And I think the key part of this is thinking about how those family days can part with local arts organizations and be relevant to our neighbors and our community reflect more of what’s around us.
Narrator 4:29
Harrison Center for the Arts Executive Director Joanna Taft, likewise ties connection, communication and integration together with her organization’s examples of how artists and arts institutions directly contribute to the positive development of communities and city identity.
Joanna Taft 4:44
There’s been a creative placement making movement in our city and across the country, and the Harrison Center has been part, was part of the beginning of that movement here, and this is where we’ve seen the power of the arts and artists to make a difference in community development. And so it’s been that was kind of what gave us permission to take art outside the four walls of our gallery and actually put it into get engaged in public art and billboard art and that type of thing. So we did the Billboard at 16th and Delaware, and people just loved the billboard. And once that went up, it helped our patron base, because people would drive fast up Delaware, and never noticed that we were there. And they’d see that art, and they’d try to figure out, what is the City Gallery and why did they put this billboard art up? And then they started coming in and asking questions and buying art.
In addition, we did actually Stefan Eicher here, he did these holiday windows for us. If anybody saw we have 24 windows that wrap around mostly the basement of the Harrison Center. And if you walk along 16th Street, generally that side of our building is dead. And that’s not what an arts organization should be. We should never feel dead. And so Stefan enlisted 23 artists, I think the numbers right to do 24 windows and and they were like little Macy’s windows. You know, with one had live kittens. How about that? Live kittens. You could actually adopt a cat from the…a feral cat. So anyway, you under promise and you over deliver. That’s, that’s what I do. And then we went on to do murals and sculpture, and we did a sound, actually sculpture and sound with Quincy Owens, who’s right here, and getting ready to finish, to do a light project with with Sean and mark. And so creative place making has helped us develop our art patrons as well, because we’ve taken art to the people, the people that haven’t come in. We’ve taken art to them, and they’ve fallen in love with it. So that’s kind of like my my quick examples, I will say that what I’ve learned is the more that we’ve connect, the more that we have integrated, the more we felt connected, and the stronger we become as a community.
Ted Frantz 6:58
This podcast was produced by the Institute for Civic Leadership and Mayoral Archives and the Department of Communication at the University of Indianapolis. It is made possible by the support of the Richard M. Fairbanks Foundation, Indiana Humanities, and the Lily Endowment. For more information, please see our website, uindy.edu/mayoral.