About Us

The concept of creating a collaborative, organizing entity was first conceived in 2018 by Dr. Lisa Brooks, Dean of the Jordan College of the Arts at Butler University. Dr. Brooks then engaged with dozens of organizational representatives and thought partners to determine the path forward. Specifically:

Local Listening Tour: To date, over 80 meetings and conversations have been held with local stakeholders in arts, education, business, social services, and government, as well as prospective funders and community-based thought partners.
National Meetings were held with the National Endowment for the Arts (Washington, DC), Lincoln Center (New York, NY), Young Audiences National Office (New York, NY), Wolf Trap Institute for Early Learning Through the Arts (Vienna, VA), and the Kennedy Center (Washington, DC ).
National Site Visits took place with MINDPOP (Austin TX); Zoellner Arts Center, Lehigh University (Bethlehem PA); Southeast Center for Education in the Arts, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga (Chattanooga TN); Ingenuity (Chicago IL); Big Thought (Dallas TX); Young Audiences of Houston (Houston TX); Metro Nashville Public Schools (Nashville TN); Newark Arts Education Roundtable (Newark NJ); and The Creative Advantage (Seattle WA).
Strategic Work with Big Thought (Dallas, TX): In 2019, Dr. Brooks engaged a team from Big Thought to come to Indianapolis and lead strategic work with the arts community, consisting of interviews and focus groups; the launch of a student voice survey, with 885 fully completed surveys from young people ranging in age from 9-24; a review of archival and extant data; and the creation of a Steering Committee.