Central Indiana Highlights
- IAC
- Programs and Services
- Funding
- Arts Organization Support
- Current: Central Indiana Highlights
Indiana Fiddlers’ Gathering, Inc.
The mission of Indiana Fiddlers' Gathering is to enrich lives by preserving traditional music through performance, education, and outreach.
What began as a small gathering celebrating music and traditional arts, is now evolving into an organization that presents an array of year-round programming. Indiana Fiddlers Gathering (IFG) hosts an annual, three-day festival each June in Battle Ground, Indiana. During the festival, IFG holds over 30 free workshops for musicians of all skill levels. The workshops are led by nationally and regionally recognized teaching arts of various traditional art forms including Blues, Bluegrass, Celtic, Square Dance, and Mexican Folk Fiddle.
In addition, the festival hosts a free children’s concert, informal jam sessions throughout the park, and main stage concerts that draw crowds from multiple states. Besides the festival, IFG has partnered with other arts organizations and businesses to host concerts in Tippecanoe County and supports music education for adults and children through a continuing relationship with the Arts Federation.
Hancock County Children's Theater
Through excellent music education and mentorship, the Hancock County Children’s Choir (HCCC) equips youth with essential life skills while igniting a community interest in our youth and the arts.
HCCC is a choral performance and education program dedicated to creating musical opportunities for youth through their Life-Skills Mentoring and Performing Arts Program. This program consists of the performance of a variety of music genres including but not limited to classical, folk, pop, sacred, and cross-cultural. Students in the choir are taught vocal production, diction, music theory, music history and appreciation, Solfege (sight singing), poise, stage presence, public speaking, and etiquette.
Through weekly rehearsals, students ages 5-18 work to prepare two primary concert programs. Each rehearsal is a dedicated mentoring session including short lessons on manners and social graces, music theory/solfege instruction, vocal production exercises, choreography instruction, and ensemble, sectional, and full choir practice. A speech coach tutors students who introduce concert pieces, serve as concert emcees, and those perform longer dramatic/comedic readings.
These well-rounded lessons and rehearsals not only prepare the students for their performances, but also equip them with applicable life skills. It gives them confidence, public speaking skills, passion, and creative expression. In addition, the HCCC brings together the community and impacts them through memorable educational and artistic performances.
The Quilters Hall of Fame
The mission of The Quilters Hall of Fame (TQHF) is to celebrate quilting as an art form by honoring the lives and accomplishments of those who have made outstanding contributions to the world of quilting.
TQHF publicly honors and praises the imagination, creativity and technical skills involved in the art of quilting and furthers advancement in the field by encouraging teaching, training, storytelling, discussion, and directed research.
The quilt museum is in a historic Colonial Revival home, featuring galleries on the first and second floors to tell the stories of honorees and to display traveling exhibits of quilts. The museum also has a research library of over 1500 volumes related to the art of quilting. The third floor of the house holds the museum’s Permanent Collection and the Education Collection.
TQHF hosts exhibitions, educational lectures and workshops, presentations about honorees and the history of quilting, and visitor use of the research facilities. Four exhibitions are offered per year, each lasting approximately twelve weeks and featuring a wide variety of types of quilts from contemporary art quilts to traditional antique quilts.
Kids Dance Outreach
The mission of Kids Dance Outreach (KDO) is to positively impact the lives of all children through joyful dance programs that inspire excellence, instill confidence, encourage teamwork, and applaud persistence.
KDO provides accessible, high-quality dance and arts education to Indianapolis children. At the core of KDO’s methodology is the belief that the arts have the power to engage all children—regardless of race, ability, or socio-economic status—and motivate them toward excellence.
KDO provides a high-quality dance education to children who are normally excluded from the arts due to systemic factors. They deliver free dance classes to children during the school day with the goal of prioritizing underserved populations. Other programs offered by KDO include Dancers with Disabilities and summer programming. Additionally, KDO hosts scholarship programs for students who want to dance outside of the school day and demonstrate extraordinary enthusiasm and commitment.
Each year, KDO presents their Event of the Year, a vibrant performance that brings together students from across Indianapolis to showcase their dance moves. It is the culmination of the year’s learning that takes place through KDO’s various programs and draws in diverse and enthusiastic audiences.
