INDY'S WEEKLY ALTERNATIVE NEWSPAPER HIGHLIGHTING ARTS, ENTERTAINMENT AND SOCIAL JUSTICE

The 5th Annual Cultural Vision Awards

When NUVO initiated the Cultural Vision Awards five years ago, we had at least two goals in mind. The first was to recognize individuals and organizations in this city doing innovative work. Contrary to stereotype, Indianapolis is a place where new and creative things happen. Unfortunately, because of that stereotype - that this is the last place to adopt a new idea or way of doing things - genuine innovation here is often overlooked. The NUVO Cultural Vision Awards are about shining a light on the talented people and creative enterprises that make this town unique.

Our second goal for the awards can be summed up in a single word: community. Selecting and recognizing Cultural Vision Award honorees is an ongoing process. Nominees for the awards are suggested to us throughout the course of the year by people all over the city. Anyone can make a nomination - and anyone can be nominated. These nominations are compiled and brought before NUVO's Editorial Committee, which, in a series of meetings, arrives at the final selection you find here.

We see all of these honorees, no matter what their field of endeavor, as being related to one another. They share a certain commitment, creativity, enthusiasm and the willingness to say "yes." We think they represent a kind of community and hope to find opportunities to bring them together, so that they might draw strength from one another - and so that NUVO might draw strength from them.

This year's honorees exemplify the qualities the NUVO Cultural Vision Awards are intended to celebrate. You'll meet artists and activists, peacemakers and provocateurs. Read their stories. Each one provides another reason to feel good about the city we call home.

100 Black Men of Indianapolis

Growing boys into men Rod Haywood hangs up the phone in his office in the United Way Building after listening to a woman explain the effects her recent divorce is having on her young son, who is now acting out in school and becoming quite an emotional handful. "It breaks my heart how the requests for help out number our ability to serve," says Haywood, executive director of 100 Black Men of Indianapolis. He reluctantly explains to his caller that she'll be placed on a waiting list, referring her to other family support groups that may be able to assist with her dilemma to find mentoring and support opportunities for her young manchild.

"It's my goal that one day we will be in a place to serve every caller, but as things presently stand, we choose to focus on what we can do as an organization as we work hard to reach those youths in our sphere of influence while implementing strategies to bring more resources to the table that will help nurture more young men."

The 100's circle of influence includes a network of more than 121 members that include such influential men as Joe Slash, Moses Gray and Lyman Rhodes, in addition to corporate liaisons Bill Mays, Payton Wells, David Kelly and Andrew Crowe Sr. Through their combined talents, the agency served 1,500 boys from the ages of 9 to 18 last year.

Established in 1984 as an affiliate chapter of 100 Black Men of America, the local group boasts an operating budget of $250,000 - funds used to provide clients with innovative programming, which includes, but is not limited to, a series of mentoring activities, including: Scholastic Basketball Camps, operated within Indianapolis Public Schools; the African-American History Challenge, a historical trivia bowl and the highly popular Beautillion Militaire; a special formal banquet, which culminates a series of rigorous rites of passage activities participating teens undertake as they make the transition from boys to men.

"We try to show our program participants that positive African-American role models are not just athletes, rappers and entertainers - but can also be found in diverse men right here in their own community," says 100 board member Kevin Davenport, an Eli Lilly & Co. senior technician. "We also challenge them to achieve excellence in their lives by dealing with them on a basis of realism. "We tell them, if they don't step up to the plate to get the tools they need in life, they are going to have a hard road to travel."

It's that kind of support that attracted 30-year-old, local educator Arnold Mickens Jr. to place his twin boys, Aaron and Allen, into the group's African-American History Challenge program. Mickens found himself and his boys adjusting to a blended family structure soon after his marriage to his wife, Lavonnya. "My wife felt it would be good for the boys to get involved in something like this as a way to help build their self-esteem and self-confidence," Mickens says. "And what we've found is the program has kind of pulled us together as a family."

To contact 100 Black Men of Indianapolis, call 921-1276. -AnarÈ V. Holmes

Blaine Hogan

Go out there and change the world

Blaine Hogan is just 23 and barely out of Butler University's Theatre Department, but he's become a creative force in Indianapolis - and a harbinger of what a new generation of artists might bring to this town. In little more than a year, Hogan has staged an experimental performance piece in a Broad Ripple alley, appeared in productions for the Indiana Repertory Theatre, the Phoenix Theatre, the Edyvean and Beef & Boards.

Most notable of all, though, was Hogan's tour de force turn as the transsexual title character in the Phoenix Underground's production of Hedwig and the Angry Inch. "You tell me I can't do something and I'm going to do it," laughs Hogan, seemingly amazed by his own gumption, "and it's going to be big."

Originally from Minnesota, Hogan knew he wanted to act from the time he was 9 years old. But when he was 13, Hogan had an experience in a theater that changed his life. His father took him to a roadshow production of Jesus Christ Superstar in Minneapolis. They had second row seats and, Hogan recalls, "It was the first real show I had ever seen." The stars were Ted Neely and Carl Anderson. Hogan was transported by the sheer scale of the production - the lights, movement, sets and costumes. Then, at the close, as the cast was taking their bows, Hogan noticed Carl Anderson surveying the audience. "He looked right at me and made a connection and smiled. I had made a connection with a living actor onstage. It blew my mind."

Flash forward 10 years. Hogan was playing Prince John in the IRT's mainstage production of The Lion in Winter. At the same time, Carl Anderson was appearing in a revival of Jesus Christ Superstar, this time at Clowes Hall. Hogan managed to contact him and Anderson agreed to a meeting at his hotel. For Hogan, the experience was like closing a circle. Anderson told Hogan that every time he performs he says a prayer: "God, let's go out there and change the world."

Indeed, he had changed Hogan's world. "He got to find out what happened 10 years ago." Hogan wants to see himself as part of an artistic tradition that offers the kind of transforming experience Anderson once sparked in him. His choice of what some might consider risky projects are really vehicles that make it possible to connect with audiences in truly compelling ways. He's seen this happen when hundreds of people braved freezing temperatures to witness his adaptation of a Kafka parable over two nights in that Broad Ripple alley and again, triumphantly, during his extended run as Hedwig.

"It gives you an incredible amount of satisfaction," Hogan reflects. "You reached people. And with that comes a sense of confidence: There"s work to be done here. There's an audience for that." Blaine Hogan takes Carl Anderson"s prayer to heart. He wants his art to change the world - and he wants that process to start here, in Indianapolis. "I"m 23 years old," he says, "just out of school. I still believe I can do that. And if not that, then what?" -David Hoppe

Butler Visiting Writers' Series

The best minds out there Long before people were talking about an Indianapolis "brain drain," writers at Butler University knew that something needed to be done to nurture our creative resources. "It always felt like writers needed to leave town in order to have a literary community and see what was going on in the larger, literary world," observes Susan Neville, a masterful writer herself, and one of the founders of the Butler Visiting Writers' Series. "So the idea was to bring writers here - to bring the mountain to Mohammed." That was in 1987. Since then, Butler has established itself as one of this country's leading showcases for writers from around the world.

Beginning every fall, the Visiting Writers' Series can be counted on to bring from 15 to 20 writers to the Butler campus and, by extension, to this city. Over 300 writers have been here in all - seven, including Toni Morrison, Nadine Gordimer and Seamus Heaney, have been Nobel Prize winners. From its inception, these programs have been thought of as a bridge uniting the university and the community.

Fran Quinn, the poet who complements Neville's predilection toward prose, explains, "What the writer coming to Butler feels is that we're paying attention. We're not just giving them a reading. It's not enough to give them a reading. Not when you're going to create other writers. If you're going to create a culture that"s going to allow writers to be in existence, you've got to work a whole other way. It's not a career. It's a life."

Perhaps nothing has exemplified this principle better than a story Neville tells about the time that Allen Ginsberg came for a performance at Clowes Hall. The author of Howl had learned that his books had been banned from the North Central High School library. No sooner did Ginsberg walk off the plane than he told Neville he wanted to meet the man responsible for taking his poetry from the library's shelves. Neville managed to locate the man and invited him backstage so that he and Ginsberg could confront one another.

But what promised to be a confrontation between two antagonists became, instead, a remarkably civilized exchange of views. They met during intermission. "Ginsberg was sitting across the table from this man who had a problem with his work and they had an incredible conversation," Neville recalls. "They actually learned from one another. They shook hands."

"What writers need," Quinn adds, "is not only an awareness of their own writing, but a community that honors and values writing. If I'm going to get these kids really interested in writing, then they need a community to walk out into that says this is an honorable task - and will honor them for doing it. They need to come into contact with some of the best minds that are out there."

To learn more about the Butler Writers' Series call 940-9861. -David Hoppe

Community Faith and Labor Coalition of Indianapolis

A progressive idea in a conservative town

Mostly because UniGov includes suburban voters in city elections, Indianapolis is one of the most conservative big cities in the country. In recent months, over 100 U.S. municipal councils passed resolutions opposing the invasion of Iraq. Ours endorsed it. Anti-predatory lending laws that have passed in other venues haven't even been tried here. For a time, Indianapolis was one of the biggest cities in the country to be governed by a Republican mayor and a Republican council. So you see the challenge facing the Community Faith and Labor Coalition of Indianapolis.

Founded three years ago to pursue a local living wage ordinance, a law passed in 102 other U.S. municipalities, the Coalition has already traveled a rocky path. A living wage ordinance proposed last year by Democrat Councilors Joanne Sanders and Elwood Black would have required city and county governments to pay a living wage (beginning at $10 an hour) to their employees. The law would have imposed the same requirement on companies seeking local government contracts, tax abatements or other subsidies. But the ordinance never got a hearing, scuttled by a lack of support from both council Republicans and Mayor Bart Peterson, a Democrat.

The activists have kept plugging along, nurturing the growing coalition of dozens of local faith-based, worker and community organizations. In the past year, the Coalition has held teach-ins, conducted marches and lobbied individual councilors. Indianapolis may be a conservative town, but the folks with the progressive idea aren't going to give up.

"A living wage ordinance is so important because the minimum wage has not kept up with the times," says Nancy Holle, one of the coordinators of the Coalition. Holle points out that the $5.15 federal minimum provides barely more than half the federal poverty level for a family of four. The Coalition's main rhetorical task is defusing the Chamber of Commerce prediction that economic disaster would flow from paying workers enough to feed their children.

Activists call this "the Chicken Little argument." Given that it is propounded by folks who drive cars worth more than many county workers' annual salary, it is a credit to the activists' restraint that they don't call it the "Let Them Eat Cake" argument. Fortunately, the Coalition has the facts on their side. Several studies show that the dozens of living wage laws already in place have reduced poverty with little or no negative impact on the local economy.

Finally, this past January, the Coalition had its first taste of success. Mayor Peterson granted the lowest-paid city workers a raise to just under $10 per hour. But workers for the county government and firms doing business or getting tax breaks from the city were not included. So in the 2003 municipal elections, the Coalition intends to make the living wage an issue in council and mayoral races. Along with John Gibson, Jay Carrigan and the late Dale Hathaway, Holle has been the public face of the coalition since day one.

"One of the things we talked about when we founded the Coalition is how to make the American dream more accessible," she says. "For many people, especially single moms who are working for $7 an hour and maybe having to get a second or third job, that dream is nothing but a mirage." For more information about the Indianapolis living wage campaign, check Indylivingwage.org. -Fran Quigley

Hoosier Environmental Council

A sustainable future

The Hoosier Environmental Council, celebrating its 20th anniversary this year, may have the least radical mission of any NUVO Cultural Vision awardee. "Our vision is for an Indiana where the health of the natural world and the human community is a central consideration in every decision made," says Tim Maloney, the group's owl-eyed executive director.

HEC's 25,000 members agree that clean air, land and water ought to go without saying. But here in Indiana, source of the country's third largest amount of pollutants, HEC's agenda overflows. Working at every level from the neighborhood to the federal, with an arsenal of tactics ranging from door-to-door canvassing to lobbying on Capitol Hill, the staff, board, volunteers and members of the Hoosier Environmental Council carry the torch for common sense solutions to the state's largely self-created environmental tribulations.

Protecting Indiana's wild lands from development has been HEC's greatest success. "That includes convincing the U.S. Forest Service to adopt our Citizens' Management Plan for the Hoosier National Forest; lobbying for the creation of an Indiana Heritage Land Trust; and preserving the Patoka River and Big Oaks National Wildlife Refuges," Maloney says.

HEC also works to handcuff corporate polluters like Ogden-Martin, an incinerator operator for the City of Indianapolis, finally fined for serious pollution violations, and the Indianapolis Water Company, stopped from dumping filter sediment into Fall Creek. In perhaps its most proactive victory, HEC worked with the Indiana Department of Environmental Management to get the state to adopt nitrogen-oxide reduction standards for power plants, along with a clean energy incentive program.

Just when it seems state and local governments are writing free passes to business interests, here comes HEC to fight a strip mall, restore a watershed or battle power plant waste. "If we can work with government to accomplish something, then we will," Maloney says. "But if they're part of the problem, then we'll work to change what they're doing. For example, on the I-69 issue, government is part of the problem," Maloney says, his soft voice rising a bit, referring to Gov. O'Bannon's campaign to build a highway that would decimate 7,000 acres, cost taxpayers $1 billion and shave 13 minutes off the drive to Evansville. In opposition to I-69, HEC delivered 138,000 petition signatures to the governor.

"The problems occur when decisions are dictated by those with economic resources, and the effects are suffered by those without it," Maloney says. In response, HEC works to raise public awareness about the problems and the solutions to Indiana's environmental challenges by offering citizens technical and legal assistance to affect policy, and by inviting everyone to demand action from legislators. Not bad for an organization with a budget of only $600,000.

As HEC celebrates 20 years of vigilance with an Oct. 18 gala and visit from water activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Tim Maloney muses, "Everything's connected to everything else, as John Muir used to say. As we work on the defensive against destructive projects, those projects tell us where we need to be on a pro-active level. We're about symptoms and causes. The bottom line goal is a sustainable future for Indiana's inhabitants and natural resources." What living, breathing Hoosier wouldn"t want the same?

You can contact HEC at 685-8800. -Anne Laker

Indiana University Medical School & the Moi University College of Health and Sciences

Refusing to let them die

By September 2000, the Indiana University Medical School and the Moi University College of Health and Sciences in Eldoret, Kenya, had already been collaborating for a decade. Hundreds of IU medical students, residents and faculty members had traveled to Kenya. Dozens of Kenyan faculty members and students had come to Indianapolis. Cross-cultural lessons had been learned while thousands of impoverished Africans received free medical treatment.

By most appearances, the IU doctors should have been satisfied with the success of the program. But their young Kenyan patients were dying from AIDS by the score, and the anti-retroviral drugs that could save them were not available in Africa. "We were all aware of the AIDS crisis, but like so many others we saw it as such an overwhelming problem, we didn't know what we could do about it," says Dr. Robert Einterz, an IU assistant dean and the program's Indianapolis-based director. "Some of us had the same defeatist attitudes we are fighting against now."

That September, however, Dr. Joe Mamlin refused to stand by and watch Daniel Ochieng die. When Mamlin first saw the Kenyan medical student, Ochieng was in an advanced stage of AIDS. He was hospitalized, grossly underweight and unable to eat. "A skeleton," Mamlin says. The Indiana doctor scraped together the money to purchase the medicine he had not been able to provide his Kenyan patients. The anti-retroviral drugs worked their legendary "Lazarus effect" on Ochieng, stealing him from death's door and guiding him to good health.

Prevention is the watchword for many programs fighting the raging African AIDS pandemic, with scarce funds seen as too precious to be spent treating the millions who are already ill. Ochieng's resurrection was "the turning point for us," Einterz says, convincing the IU doctors that treatment has to be a component of the global AIDS struggle. The IU doctors began to aggressively seek funding for treatment.

This past summer, a coalition of foundations awarded the IU-Moi program one of just 12 international grants given to confront mother-to-child HIV transmission in the developing world. The grant provides for HIV care and treatment for mothers, children and other family members, and includes a commitment to lifetime treatment of enrolled patients. Along with other private and institutional donations, the IU-Moi team has created a program that treats nearly 1,000 Kenyans for life. With half of their hospitalized Eldoret patients still dying from HIV, the IU doctors' goal is to increase the number treated to 10,000.

Even more important, the IU-Moi University collaboration may provide the model for HIV care that can be replicated throughout the developing world. Many observers think simply pouring millions of dollars into anti-AIDS efforts in Africa will not work. Instead, those dollars should be used in careful imitation of a culturally sensitive and time-tested treatment and prevention model. A model, as it happens, like the one being created by the IU program. One Indiana doctor refused to accept the inevitable, and Ochieng's life was saved. Now, Mamlin and his colleagues are refusing to accept the death sentences handed to all their African AIDS patients. With a little help, they may end up saving a continent.

To contribute to the IU-Moi partnership, call the program's offices at 630-6770. -Fran Quigley

Indiana Youth Group

Empowering youth

Indiana Youth Group's Eastside center is an unsigned, non-descript gray building. Although it looks unremarkable from the outside, it's home to a national landmark: IYG is one of the oldest agencies in the nation devoted to the needs of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender youth. Founded in 1987 by Chris Gonzales and Pat Jordan, IYG has grown from bi-weekly living room meetings with just a handful of youth, to a nationally-recognized program that served over 2,100 youth in 2001 - a year in which not a single IYG client tested positive for HIV or attempted suicide.

These heartening figures reflect IYG's shift over the past 16 years from crisis intervention to an emphasis on building youths' self-esteem, personal skills and leadership potential, while still providing an array of health, counseling, education, substance abuse and advocacy services. "In 1987, they were really focused mostly on the problems the kids had in their lives. They dealt with homelessness, abuse, school harassment, drug issues and HIV," Executive Director Rob Connoley says. "We still deal with all of that, but the focus has changed so much - we're looking at the youth as young people with incredible potential. What we"re really about now is empowering youth to change Indianapolis."

IYG's innovative approach to youth development encourages youth to take an active role in running the agency, from hiring staff to planning and implementing programs. Current projects include an art auction, advocacy for students fighting for the right to take a same-gender date to the prom, a cutting-edge online club drug awareness campaign, a media literacy campaign on tobacco advertising and small groups ranging from relationships to community service to Queer Grrrls, a feminist activism and discussion group.

Indianapolis' estimated 1,200 homeless GLBT youth are one of the most vulnerable populations IYG serves; many have had to leave home because parents disapproved of their sexual orientation. A federal grant funds outreach worker Jill Thomas to hit the streets several nights a week, looking for youth in need of food, shelter and other services. Queer youth are often not welcome in faith-based shelters, and some engage in risky sex work to survive.

Whether they come to IYG for emergency assistance, or just to spend time with like-minded peers, 91 percent of youth report increased self-esteem after six months of involvement with IYG, and 68 percent say they feel accepted by their families.

On a recent afternoon, John, 15, and Ali, 16, are hanging out, listening to the new White Stripes album. John, who likes art and does his own zine, is working on a painting. He says IYG helped him deal with harassment at school. "It's hard to accept yourself until you find other people who are like you." Ali only recently started coming to IYG, mainly for social reasons. "There's always different stuff going on, someone to talk to," she says.

While John and Ali think GLBT people are probably more accepted in this Will & Grace-era than ever before, Connoley says there will always be a need for IYG. "We don't do "gay" programs," he says. "We do youth empowerment."

For more information about IYG, call 317-541-8726, or visit www.indianayouthgroup.org. -Summer Wood

Key Cinemas

Movies that make people think

Ron Keedy has been a cinephile ever since he first saw War of the Worlds in 1954. "It scared the devil out of me - I'll never forget that as long as I live."

Growing up in Crawfordsville, he spent Saturday afternoons at the Strand Theater, engrossed in the sci-fi movies of the era that he loves to this day. Keedy got his first job at the Ben-Hur drive-in in 1965, and apart from a three-year tour of military service in Vietnam, he has devoted himself to the art of running movie theaters ever since.

Keedy took a risk when he opened Key Cinemas in 1999, on the south side of Washington Street, which he calls the city's cultural "Mason-Dixon Line." Though Key is just 10 minutes from downtown, Keedy constantly battles the perception that it's located in a cultural hinterland, accessible only to those intrepid moviegoers brave enough to travel southward to his unassuming location in a strip mall off of South Keystone Avenue.

For people willing to venture off the beaten path - literally and culturally - Key Cinemas has become one of the Midwest's best destinations for cutting-edge, independent, foreign and documentary films. Keedy takes financial risks to bring in films no other theater in Indiana would dream of showing. "They play it safe, and we play everything else," Keedy says.

His own taste runs towards documentaries, Spanish and Italian cinema, sci-fi and classic films, but he'll take a chance on anything that looks interesting, from Akira Kurosawa's three and a half hour masterpiece The Seven Samurai, to Gus Van Sant's controversial new minimalist film Gerry. Surprisingly, Key's highest-grossing film to date has been the documentary The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg.

Indianapolis has been slow to respond to Key's eclectic, often edgy programming, but Keedy has persevered, spurred on by his unwavering passion for film. "It's been a teaching period, getting people used to where we are and what we're doing, and it's finally starting to pay off." Although Keedy loves the autonomy of booking exactly what he wants, "There have been times where I didn't know where the next penny was coming from," he admits.

For people around the Midwest - Keedy's patrons come from as far away as Columbus, Ohio, Louisville, Fort Wayne and Cincinnati - who are tired of factory-like multiplexes and formulaic Hollywood blockbusters, Keedy offers a genuine alternative: "My philosophy is to give people the best cutting-edge films possible. That's what I like to do. I like movies that make people think, or that show them something they've never seen before."

In addition to its weekly programming, Key Cinemas hosts two film festivals each year, the Indianapolis Underground Film Festival and the Indianapolis Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, the latter of which drew more than 2,000 attendees last year, raising $10,000 for Indiana Youth Group.

Keedy plans to expand the theater this summer, opening a deli next door offering a pre-movie menu of pizzas, sandwiches and coffees. If his notoriously addictive homemade caramel corn is any indicator, the deli should do well.

Despite the challenges he faces, Keedy is optimistic about the future of Key Cinemas. "I don't know what I would do if I weren"t doing this," he says with a wry smile. "It's a struggle, and I feel like pulling my hair out sometimes, but I'm having fun."

Visit Key Cinemas online at www.keycinemas.com. -Summer Wood

Martin Luther King Multi-Service Center

An instrument for change

Martin Luther King Multi-Service Center director Diane Jackson spreads out a brochure listing the dozens of programs the center puts on. Computer training, activities for seniors, GED classes, after-school care for kids, a food pantry, utility and rental assistance. As Jackson speaks, seniors are preparing for lunch and a job fair is getting ready to start. Teen Court will happen later today.

Founded in 1972 and now located at 40th and Illinois streets, the center serves thousands of families, most of whom are working poor or lower middle class and live in a diverse area stretching from the Mapleton-Fall Creek neighborhood all the way up to Broad Ripple. But the center is about more than just helping with life's emergencies and bare necessities. "We are all of these programs," Jackson says. "But there is so much more that has to emanate from those programs. We need to be an instrument for change."

The instrument for change here may be a saxophone, or sometimes a paint brush. Music and art fills the center, thanks to partnerships with the Indianapolis Arts Center, the American Pianists Association, Butler University, the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra and others. Young people get professional visual arts and music instruction, seniors enjoy recitals and a mentoring program helps teens train for and find arts-related careers.

"The arts are a universal language," Jackson says. "With so many arts programs being cut out of the schools, this is another way for parents to get these opportunities for their children."

The center also teaches young people to be active and informed citizens of their community and their world. King"s Kids is an award-winning oratory team, a Germany-U.S. exchange program thrives. For World AIDS Day, students wrote and performed in a play that was taped and shared with their peers in South Africa.