This fall, Indianapolis’s oldest public green space, Garfield Park, located in the diverse Near Southside neighborhood, experienced a burst of vitality, community and joy with the debut of the Levitt VIBE Indianapolis Music Series.

Standing for Vibrant Inclusive Beats for Everyone, the Levitt VIBE program is a two-year, pilot matching grant that brings five to ten free outdoor concerts per season to a specific neighborhood within a large city or metro area. By providing diverse music, recreational and cultural opportunities, and a welcoming space for residents to gather, dance and picnic with each other, the VIBE program mirrors the Levitt Foundation’s mission of strengthening the social fabric of our towns and cities.

The inaugural season of Levitt VIBE Indianapolis, which launched on September 1, has included seven Sunday afternoon concerts throughout September and October. The series is presented by artist-led community organization Big Car Collaborative, in partnership with the cultural organization Arte Mexicano en Indiana and the Indy Parks and Recreation government agency.

“We’re able to really activate [Garfield Park] and have more energy than a typical Sunday,” said Big Car Collaborative Co-Founder and Executive Director Jim Walker. The music series has attracted food trucks, art-making activities, and more to the park, which hosts a Farmers Market on Saturdays, but is otherwise underused on the weekends. The Garfield Park Art Center, located next to the music area, has even extended its hours to remain open on Sundays in conjunction with this new programming. As the series has taken off, around 250 people attend Levitt VIBE Indianapolis each week, with a mix of individuals, friends, and families from the surrounding neighborhood and beyond.

The group El Mirambaso performs marimba at Levitt VIBE Indianapolis in September.

Levitt VIBE Indianapolis extends Big Car’s focus on the Near Southside area of Indianapolis, where it has been headquartered since the nonprofit launched in 2004. Getting connected with the Levitt Foundation through its neighbor in Ohio, Levitt Pavilion Dayton, the Levitt VIBE program made sense for Big Car on multiple levels, as the organization focuses on arts and culture, as well as creative placemaking in its Midwest community.

Since its debut 20 years ago, Big Car has produced nearly 200 art and creative-placemaking projects, including managing the Tube Factory artspace, a contemporary art museum and community center near Garfield Park; producing SPARK on the Circle, a site- and community-specific public art project at Monument Circle in Downtown Indianapolis; running local radio station 99.1 WQRT LPFM; offering grants and residencies to artists and designers; and presenting art exhibitions, installations, and murals in Indianapolis and across the country.

As Hannah A. Hadley, Big Car Grants and Marketing Coordinator, explained, “Our mission is to bring art to people and people to art. What better way to do that than with a free community concert series?”

Building Up Hyperlocal Community

As Indiana’s state capital, Indianapolis is known for its major sports scene, including hosting the Indy 500 and as the headquarters of the NCAA. Beyond that reputation, the city’s downtown core has emerged as an art and culture hub within the last decade, with art galleries and museums, theater productions, and concerts attracting residents all over the area. Stretching between the Central Canal and White River, Indiana Avenue boasts a legacy as a former hub of Black businesses and arts in the early 20th century, including numerous jazz clubs; today, this district remains home to several historic and cultural institutions, including the Madam Walker Legacy Center and Kurt Vonnegut Museum & Library.

While having a population of nearly 2 million people, Indianapolis is a widespread metropolitan area, with only half of its residents located within the city limits. Without nature-made barriers like mountains or lakes nearby, the city and its suburbs have expanded over the past several years. Census data from 2023 shows that the Indianapolis area has grown at twice the pace of the national average since 2020, with the majority of growth taking place in the suburbs. This means that recent investment has focused on those areas outside of the city limits, with less investment going to neighborhoods like Near Southside, where Levitt VIBE Indianapolis takes place.

“The neighborhoods we work in and live in, they always had good neighbors and solid neighborhood leadership,” Walker explained, “but our Southside area has lacked services and opportunities for a long time.” Additionally, 14% of residents and 19% of children in Marion County, where Indianapolis is located, live below the federal poverty line, which is higher than the national average.

A Garfield Park mural in the Near Southside of Indianapolis.

“Garfield Park is an especially important place for our neighborhood and the neighborhoods adjacent to it,” Walker added. “It is this public asset and offers things, like our Levitt VIBE series, that are free for the community. It can really serve the community as a whole.”

The Near Southside is a diverse locale of Indianapolis with an official population around 5,200, which includes a large Mexican population. Big Car knew a partnership with Arte Mexicano en Indiana (AMI)—an arts nonprofit that advocates for Mexican and Latino artists and culture and already had an active presence in the neighborhood, would be a beautiful fit for Levitt VIBE. Plus, Big Car had a track record of working with its founder, Eduardo Luna, for many years.

Collaborations like this are a key component of Levitt VIBE Indianapolis. Rather than producing a competing event for Mexican Independence Day, for example, Levitt VIBE Indianapolis supported and promoted the local Mexican Consulate event held September 15 in Garfield Park. Similarly, when another nonprofit organization, Redemption Outreach Services, Inc., wanted to host a community event featuring an art fair and social service providers in the park, Levitt VIBE Indianapolis collaborated with them—Levitt VIBE providing the music, and ROSI the programming. This type of partnership and support of a hyperlocal nonprofit is an integral part of Big Car’s work and was reflected throughout Levitt VIBE Indianapolis.

Elevating the Music Scene

In addition to activating this underused space and supporting a historically under-resourced community within the larger metro of Indianapolis, Big Car is deliberate about doing their work in a way that is thoughtful about supporting artists and the music ecosystem of the city.

Forgotten Tribe presented a diverse mix of Reggae, Hip-Hop/Soul, and Latin vibes at Levitt VIBE Indianapolis in September.

“As an organization that’s been around 20 years, we want to make sure that we’re supporting the artists and the musicians in our community so that they can afford to make a living off of the art that they do,” he said. In addition to incorporating local and regional artists into their programming, Levitt VIBE Indianapolis ensures artists are paid a competitive fee and enjoy top-quality sound production—reflecting a core hallmark of all Levitt programs.

Each week, Levitt VIBE Indianapolis presents four acts performing on stage, starting with a spoken word or ambient sound artist, and each of the following acts increases the intensity of the music and performance, leading up to the headliner. The performers this past fall have included a mix of local, regional, national, and international artists—and each week features at least one Mexican or Latino artist, secured through the collaboration with Arte Mexicano en Indiana.

“We’re having a good cross section of different kinds of music,” Walker said. “Our approach allows us to invest a lot in the musicians in this first year, specifically to get the series going and to balance the genres in order to attract a lot of different people.” This strategy has helped bring together a diverse audience, including Black, Hispanic, and White folks and families to enjoy the concerts.

In addition to focusing on enriching the community and neighborhood, Levitt VIBE Indianapolis has ambitious goals to elevate the music scene in the area—not only for concertgoers, but for the artists themselves.

“To have Indianapolis as a [touring] option, it helps the city of Indianapolis. It helps us to be on the map,” Luna said. “That will bring more talent into town, which helps inspire our local bands to see that they can tour like the national acts.”

This year, artists including internationally renowned Girl Ultra (Mexico City), Bitchin Bajas (Chicago), and Native Sun (New York City) have shared the stage with local acts like progressive pop group Mina & the Wondrous Flying Machine, Mariachi Sol Jalisciense, singer-songwriter Allison Victoria, the Indianapolis Metropolitan Youth Orchestra, and more. Additionally, the series incorporates poetry, spoken word, dance, sign language, and more, featuring Hoosier queer, transgender, and intersex poet Sylvia Thomas, and Elisa Harkins, a Native American (Cherokee/Muscogee) and Japanese artist / composer originally hailing from Miami, Oklahoma.

“A large goal when it comes to creating community is the cross-cultural aspect and introducing people to new genres of music, cultures and conversations,” Hadley said. “We’re definitely trying to encourage cross-cultural interactions.”

Connecting Music and Placemaking

A group of children participate in Big Car’s Postcard Project, one of the all-ages art-making projects that took place at Levitt VIBE Indianapolis.

Big Car Collaborative also sees Levitt VIBE Indianapolis as a way to expand its ongoing placemaking and community work and connect with new music-loving audiences. The lawn has been activated with food trucks, an H2O to Go mobile water truck provided by partner Citizens Energy Group, and art-making stations for all ages—including one where attendees could color postcards and mail them anywhere in the world—courtesy of Big Car.

“We’re just creating this nice spot for people to hang out, and maybe get creative, visit with neighbors,” Walker said. “We are getting people who are coming on purpose and people who are at the park already with their family, or just walking around looking for something to do. It’s working out well in terms of being a thing that’s visible in a new location where there’s normally nothing happening.”

That said, Levitt VIBE Indianapolis knows that its community has a lot of options for how to spend their Sundays, with all of Indianapolis at their fingertips—and so the organization “leans in” to the specificity of the surrounding area.

“Our community is kind of like a small town around the park,” Walker said, “but they do have the option of going anywhere else in the city. We don’t have a very captive audience. For us, the hyperlocal approach is working well.”

As the music series wraps up its final weeks of the 2024 season, the impact has been undeniable. On average, the series is seeing an average of 250 people stop by during its weekly performances in Garfield Park—and the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive from the community. On a recent sunny Sunday, with the ROSI art and service and art taking place alongside Levitt VIBE, families and kids enjoyed the concert and “Bubble Jim” in equal measure, while friends came out to support local musicians performing on stage. The diverse crowd sat on blankets and chairs, enjoying the shade from the trees, and experienced genre-bending artists like the Eli Winter Trio and Indigenous multi-disciplinary artist Elisa Harkins, whose exhibit “Ekvnv (Land), the Sacred Mother from Which We Came” was also on display at Big Car’s Tube Factory art space down the street.

“Our neighborhood—and the park itself—is a place where everyone feels comfortable,” Walker said, “and we’re excited to be reinforcing that.”

The inaugural Levitt VIBE Indianapolis Music Series continues through October 20, and you can learn more at BigCar.org.