The Indiana Humanities Council
Yes, I have gotten really lazy with the blogging, as MJ calls me out in a comment on the last link blog post I just put up.
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"the Council encourages Hoosiers to think, read and talk. How? By creating its own programs, such as Community Conversations, Evenings at the House and Novel Conversations; by providing grants for humanities programs throughout the state; and by providing a space–physically and digitally–for people to connect and converse."
On Nov 29, 2010, MJ commented on links for 2010-11-29
I’d love to know the context for this link. I miss your bloggy-type words that used to wrap around the links. Do you have any of them for this one? Pleeeeeeease?
Yes. Yes, I do….
I decided to look up this not-for-profit the other day because I remembered them from the Pecha Kucha presentations as a part of the Spirit and Place festival that took place in November. I failed to blog about those, too.
Pecha Kucha is a lightning-fast presentation – 20 slides, and 20 seconds of explanation about each of them. It started in Tokyo in 2003 as a way for designers to present their work, and became instantly popular there. Organizations around the world have taken up the style of presentation. This past year I did one myself at work presenting on how the new ways that fonts can be displayed on websites. Yes, I really should get a hold of the video of that an put it here on my blog, too, because I was really proud of how it came out. Lazy lazy blogger. Bad me.
There is an Indianapolis organization that hosts a Pecha Kucha competition – presenters give an idea for a not-for-profit business they’d like to start, voting happens and the winner is awarded prize money to start the business. The competition we witnessed in November was apparently the 11th one in Indianapolis. Blow me down – I had no idea it was even going on. How does this shit managed to sneak by me? I’m curious and (I thought) reasonably well-informed as to the goings on in town, but this is something I hadn’t heard of until this year.
I went to the presentation with Stephanie and MJ, and noticed that the Indiana Humanities Council was one of the sponsors. That one made me go HMMM? also. I haven’t heard of them before that event, but this group seems right up my ally; promoting reading and the arts. Who are these people doing stuff I’m interested in and not informing me about it? Sheesh, man.
IHC has a very beautiful website, and I poked around on it trying to figure out how long the organization has been around, without quite putting my finger on the answer. They have a blog on the site – that would be the “think.read.talk” tab on the site – that goes back to March of 2010, but that only indicates the blog page was started then. There’s not indication in the “about” materials of when the organization formed, or it’s history. They have some big league people on their board of directors.
And notably most of all – they’re located in my neighborhood – Old Northside – in the Meredith Nicholson house. I didn’t realize that house was still in existence – a good chunk of the historically significant houses in Old Northside have been torn down, unfortunately. Meredith Nicholson was an nationally prominent author in the late 1800s and early 1900s in Indianapolis, and a pal of James Whitcomb Riley. He lived in the house at 1500 North Delaware Street while writing most of his books, including the The House of a Thousand Candles the most famous of his works and one I read just last year.
We’ve been living in the neighborhood for almost 5 years and we’ve toured or visited pretty much every significant house in the neighborhood. Most of them are discussed or linked to on the neighborhood website, but this one hasn’t been discussed much. Odd.
So – the Indiana Humanities Council. They have first Fridays events, although it looks like there isn’t one is scheduled for December. [First Fridays is a art tour that takes place on the First Friday of every month, sponsored by the Indiana Downtown Artists and Dealers Association – something that I’ve also failed to write about, although we went to several First Friday events this summer. Lazy blogger. No cookies for me.]
We need to go, MJ, to one of these IHC event dealios. Because I have clearly been out of touch with what’s going on in the city for some time. And I need to get up to speed.