?I would like to say thank you to The Polis Center and to all the contributing and participating organizations and churches for the Spirit & Place Festival. My eyes were opened, my heart touched, and my appreciation for the city?s wonderful diversity greatly increased. Each event I attended not only challenged me, but offered comfort and hope for the future in this time of fear and uncertainty. Goodness does exist?in abundance.?
?a letter to the Indianapolis Star, December 2001

Spirit & Place Final Report 2001
Executive Summary

Meaningful civic discourse, cross-sector collaboration, and authentic cultural exchanges: these were the outcomes of the 2001 Spirit & Place Civic Festival. The rich artistic, humanistic, and religious traditions of Central Indiana provided fertile ground for provocative and productive programs around the theme ?Crossing Boundaries.? The sixth annual festival featured 90 public programs, engaged 110 partner institutions, spotlighted 98 artists and presenters, and reached 34,000 citizens through live events and broadcasts.

Spirit & Place: Crossing Boundaries was held in Central Indiana November 2-13, 2001, in venues throughout Marion County and in Hamilton and Johnson counties. Audiences attended programs with topics as diverse as multi-racial families, heaven, architecture, labyrinths, jazz, monasticism, mapmaking, Native American art and film, and inner city renewal. The Crossing Boundaries theme invited the festival?s participants to take risks in search of new relationships, and to reach across lines of geography, belief, and ethnicity, to wrestle together with issues resonant for our nation and our community.

Key accomplishments of the 2001 festival include:

• The festival resulted in the several unique cross-sector partnerships and new cultural capital in the form of a tour of ?transcendent spaces? in Indianapolis, an exhibition of photos by Hispanic youth, the city?s first poetry memorization project, and a publication of essays called ?Crossing Boundaries in Faith Traditions.?


• Live attendance at Spirit & Place 2001 quadrupled from the previous year. Forty-four percent of attendees had never attended before; 90 percent of all attendees expect to return. This great leap is attributed to a broader set of partners and increased promotion.


• The African-American community responded enthusiastically to Spirit & Place. Presenters such as Cornel West and a stronger relationship to the Indianapolis Recorder translated to an audience that was 16 percent black.


• Quality of interaction and learning was very high. 90% of those who completed evaluations came away from the event with a deeper understanding of a community issue. Seventy percent reported that they actively participated in the program.

Spirit & Place was made possible by its partnering institutions?110 organizations representing the cultural, educational, and faith-based communities?as well as financial support from the Lilly Endowment Inc., SAFECO, the Rotary Foundation of Indianapolis, and others listed (make link to 2001 donors page).

To receive a full report on Spirit & Place 2001, covering the areas below, please e-mail Anne Laker.

• Public Conversation


• Partnership Quality


• Program Quality


• Public & Media Relations


• Fundraising & Development


• Management Structure & Planning Process


• In-Kind Contributions


• Financial Statement


• 2001 Spirit & Place Partners


• Audience Demographics


• Press Clippings