Showcasing the work of UIndy Social Practice students! In the last year, they have engaged many communities, cultures & arts practices. The gallery show will highlight thesis projects & other projects from throughout the program.

Additional events are planned during the show to highlight individual projects in social practice art and creative placemaking.

About the thesis projects:

In Place is a series of pop-up events that create space for community connection through social exchange. For example, this summer Lauren Ditchley and a team of five TeenWorks youth employees collaborated with Joanna Taft of the Harrison Center to produce seven porch parties at the homes of longtime residents in the Monon 16 neighborhood. At each porch party, teens and residents shared lunch and responded to prompts such as, “How long have you lived here?” and “What was your first job?” The collaborative team share these conversations and tips for hosting your own porch party in a zine based on video and sound recordings, photos, and journals.

Arranged Encounters is a project by Linnea Gartin that records and archives the stories of women in the Midwest experiencing contemporary society. Through podcast episodes and a curated exhibition of artifacts from the interview experience, the goal is to expose the common woman’s wisdom, story, and perspective on the world. The twist is each episode is recorded in a different environment and questions are pulled at random by the guest.

Brittany Kugler, with No Exit Performance, is launching the Theatrical Assets Library in the late summer of 2018. The Theatrical Assets Library is an opportunity for performance groups in Indianapolis to join their assets, like costumes and sets, together. This will allow those groups to save money, increase green initiatives, and grow professional opportunities.

Emma Landwerlen’s Queer Between Coasts is an ongoing archive examining LGBT lives in the Midwest through personal interviews, ephemera, and art. The project also explores what it means to be visibly queer in the midwest, an act that can feel simultaneously powerful and vulnerable.

Easel Eats, by Danielle Wilborn, combines thoughtful discussion of the meaning behind an artists work with an informal shared meal of the artists choosing in an attempt to share the power of storytelling through art and how it can be used to launch community conversations. Participating artists will be shadowed during their work and all project documentation will be placed in a multimedia collection and made public.