The Drag Queens of Indiana Avenue

In 1933, Indianapolis hosted its first pansy ball with great fanfare in a jazz club along Indiana Avenue. Stephen Lane presents his graduate work at IUPUI in the contributions of LGBTQ+ people to the social and cultural development of Indianapolis.

Bio: Stephen Lane is a librarian who received his Masters in Library and Information Science and a Masters in Public History at IUPUI in 2018. He is passionate about labor history, LGBTQ+ history and Black history and how those histories intersect and intertwine. He lives in the Haughville neighborhood and serves on the Indianapolis Public Library board of trustees. Stephen enjoys riding his bike and attending art shows around Indianapolis.

SPARK is a partnership with Downtown Indy, the City of Indianapolis, and the Indiana War Memorials Commission — and funded by the Capital Improvements Board. It is a continuation of our work last year and in 2015 on the Circle.

At Big Car, we approach our work at the Circle as a site- and community-specific socially engaged art and creative placemaking project. The SPARK on the Circle pop-up park was collaboratively designed with Indianapolis-based Merritt Chase to be a restorative public place where people of all walks of life can relax, play, socialize, and engage with art and artists in the heart of our city.