This summer has been one of the most amazing summers of my life. I have learned so much in such a short amount of time. I have fallen in love with Indianapolis and found a home there. I’ve also fallen in love with the Harrison Center and the work the incredible staff is doing to create positive change in Indy.

The Harrison Center builds relationships with the residents and business owners of Indianapolis neighborhoods so they can help make neighborhoods healthy, foster community identity, and work on renewal in the city. Art is central to this work. The Harrison Center is home to 32 resident artists, many of whom are creative placemakers and collaborate with the Center for city projects. The “city side” of the Center works on building these close relationships with people all over the city and engaging them through art and other creative mediums like public art events, public art installations, porching, and other creative placemaking tools.

This form of activism is innovative and, though it continues to gain popularity across the country, it is still unconventional. I had never heard of creative placemaking until I came here. On the first day of my internship, my internship coordinator, Moriah, told me we would all be attending a porch party for lunch. I was very confused as to why we would be eating lunch in a neighbor’s yard in the middle of the work day. By the end of my first week, I was quickly starting to understand why.

This summer, we worked specifically in the Martindale-Brightwood neighborhood of Indianapolis. All of my internship projects were focused on connecting this neighborhood’s past to the present. The goal of the work is to invite new residents and business owners in the area into the existing stories and traditions of the neighborhood as it continues to experience gentrification. This kind of community engagement the Harrison Center does unites the community, and it eliminates racial inequity.

I organized a storytelling night for the residents of Martindale-Brightwood to share their stories with new neighbors. I also co-created an art show with fashion pieces that celebrated neighborhood matriarchs. I spent a lot of time porching with residents, interviewing them, and taking their photographs. Resident artists painted these older residents’ portraits and they were turned into billboards, postcards, and shown at exhibitions for all of Indy to see. All of these initiatives are examples of creative placemaking.

The work the Harrison Center does is hard. It takes years of effort, dedication, and a strong belief in the cause. It truly takes a village, but it works. In just two months, I was able to witness a community in Indianapolis become closer, more loving, more understanding, and stronger. The Harrison Center has shown me the meaning of community, how to build it, and what it can offer us as humans. It has shown me what a neighborhood really looks like, and that we desperately need close-knit, healthy neighborhoods with identity and culture now more than ever. As I leave Indianapolis, I feel confident that I can take what I’ve learned here and bring it to my own community.