“I helped change one neighbourhood into a hipster place, and then we got priced out of there.” Artist Jim Walker is describing the shift in fortunes of the Fountain Square district of Indianapolis, where his Big Car arts collective was born a decade ago – and of the artists and residents who have been forced to move on by the neighbourhood’s gentrification.

Walker’s experience is an increasingly familiar story in cities around the world – a tale of urban pioneers who play a central role in the redevelopment of a downtown area, only to find themselves unable to afford to stay there. Is there a more equitable way? That’s just what Walker is trying to find out with his latest arts-led Indianapolis project.

When Walker and his wife, Shauta Marsh – alongside a collective of artists, writers, designers and musicians – first took up residency in the vast and (at that time) empty Murphy Art Center in Fountain Square for $135 per month, they had little idea that a decade later, the area would be the centre of the city’s music and film sectors; emblematic of an arts- and creative industries-based inner-city revival.

Jim Walker, director of Big Car

Ten years ago, Fountain Square was off the Indianapolis cultural map, with poor transit and social amenities. “Instead of sitting around and complaining about the cultural offerings our city lacked,” Walker says, “we started making things happen, doing what artists can to help turn our neighbourhood around.”

Ranked the US’s ninth poorest city, Indianapolis has long had a surfeit of vacant inner-city spaces and disused land, created from flight to the suburbs. Walker views the key to Fountain Square’s early success as the availability of empty storefronts that could be used in experimental fashion.



However, when the property market shifted, vacant spaces were filled and the original artists were caught unawares. “There’s no way to control it when you are the artist or the arts organisation; you’re at the mercy of the market,” Walker says. “We weren’t prepared.”

These days, the Fountain Square neighbourhood is linked to downtown and the rest of the city by the Cultural Trail cycle route, as well as a regular bus service. An Indiana University Public Policy Institute report on the Cultural Trail estimates a $1bn increase in property values along this route.

Artist Niina Cochran at the Forensic Friends booth, part of Big Car’s Spark Monument Circle placemaking programme

Fountain Square has improved roads and sidewalks, and was the first home of the Indianapolis Museum of Modern Art (iMOCA). Its previously vacant stores are now filled with the usual hipster suspects: craft breweries, achingly cool art galleries, bike shops and high-end local produce stores. Individual artists, however, have been priced out of the area, their studios now offices and music venues.

While some lower-rent properties are still available in Fountain Square, the change led Walker to look at other areas in the city that could offer the vacant space Big Car’s operation requires. But this time, Walker wanted to do it differently – pushing for a model of regeneration that places the arts in control of the development process; a model that keeps artists and locals at the centre of the change, and should prevent residents from getting priced out.

His Big Car collective is now busy in Garfield Park, a disinvested area on the south side of Indianapolis, having located a new home on one of the city’s arterial routes, Shelby Street, which is lined by a small parade of service stores, a secondhand bookshop and a cafe.

Thanks to city government and philanthropic help as well as its own funds, Big Car has bought a “land trust”, as Walker calls it, “for the artists working hard with neighbours to improve the area”. The development includes two former factories now repurposed as studios, exhibition and performance spaces, and the Listen Hear sound-art gallery and radio station – located in what used to be a laundromat. Vacant houses are being renovated into affordable homes for artists; Big Car is also a key partner in a community-led safer streets programme, and in talks to bring Indianapolis’s rapid transit to the area.

We see ​assets that others miss because of our experience of making something out of very little Jim Walker

In Garfield Park, houses are being renovated into affordable homes for artists. Photograph: Big Car

The whole endeavour is responding to the neighbourhood’s desire for viable and locally owned enterprises to fill its vacant buildings. The goal is to improve the “lived experience” of Garfield Park, so that residents feel proud of their locale and consider art and creativity integral to its culture.

“We’re informed by our experience in Fountain Square, and see assets that others miss because of our experience as artists of making something out of very little,” says Walker. “[As Garfield Park residents] we can think of what we want it to be like here in the future – we see ourselves, the artists we bring in, and our neighbours of all income levels, still here enjoying the results.”

A major part of the regeneration project is the buying of real estate. Two vacant houses have been bought already in partnership with Riley Area Development Corporation, with other purchases in negotiation. The business model is to offer low-income artists an equity stake in the affordable homes, thus giving them security of residence and the opportunity to become part of, and leaders in, the community.

Walker says the Garfield Park project is a community development and non-profit arts collaboration that “uses the strengths of the artists, and really trusts that”. Yet he is also thinking ahead to the inevitable time when commercial developers stake a claim to the area.

“That’s okay as a proportion of the way things work,” Walker concedes. “But a proportion of the control must remain in the hands of the artists and this community. Everything the artists are doing in our project is related to the community, so anything that’s owned by us in this neighbourhood is beneficial for artists as well as the local people. It’s a really strong balance.”

Cara Courage is a final year placemaking PhD candidate. Big Car is one of her research project case studies.

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