INDIANAPOLIS — The Garfield Park neighborhood on the southern edge of downtown Indianapolis is the new, long-term home and key area of focus for Big Car Collaborative, an artist-led nonprofit placemaking and community arts organization. With more than $600,000 raised so far to fund the work, Big Car and its neighborhood partners are confident this creative approach to community development will help boost momentum for this often-overlooked area of the city.
This fall, Big Car will open a 12,000-square-foot community space for creativity, culture and community called The Tube Factory art space. It will feature a gathering and education area, exhibition space for national and local artists, a tinkering lab for hands-on learning and workshop for Big Car artists and neighbors. The structure at 1125 Cruft St. is a formerly vacant manufacturing building first built in 1908 by Weber Dairy and last owned by Tube Processing Corporation, a locally based company still operating in nearby facilities.
Big Car executive director Jim Walker noted that Tube Processing has been “generous and excellent to work with” on this project. At the nearby intersection of Cruft and Shelby streets, another community space, formerly vacant, is called Listen Hear and will include a small record store, public gathering space for education and cultural programing, and a home for Big Car’s soon-to-launch low-power FM community radio station.
Big Car is also teaming up with Riley Area Development Corporation to refurbish vacant and neglected houses on Cruft Street as affordable live-and-work homes for artists. Lastly, Big Car is working with the Garfield Neighbors Association and city leaders to help boost livability and reconnect parts of the neighborhood split from Garfield Park by vehicle-focused Shelby Street and nearby I-65.
Total investment in the Garfield Park Creative Community project will be about $1.5 million. Big Car is currently launching a campaign for donations and grants to cover about half that amount. So far, the City of Indianapolis has awarded Big Car a $460,000 community development block grant for purchase and renovation of the two buildings as community spaces that will employ several people in full-time creative jobs. Riley Area Development Corporation supported Big Car in its block grant application. Additionally, the Indianapolis Neighborhood Housing Partnership (INHP) invested $75,000 in Big Car and Riley Area Development’s housing initiative to refurbish vacant and neglected properties on Cruft Street as affordable live and work homes for artists.
