By Maria Cook
Brick Street Poetry, a nonprofit organization that has hosted poetry readings and other programs in Zionsville for more than 10 years, plans to open an outdoor space dedicated to the arts in Indianapolis.
Brick Street Poetry purchased property in Indianapolis near IPS School 87 in August. The organization is raising funds to turn the vacant lot into the Literary Art Park, which will host outdoor summer workshops. According to Brick Street Poetry Program Chair Joyce Brinkman, workshops will first teach participants how to garden, then how to write prose and poetry, and finally how to turn their writings into works of visual art.
“There is going to be cedar privacy fencing on the lot, and that’s going to serve as the gallery wall for the artwork of the students at the end of the summer,” Brinkman said. “It’s a summer’s worth of these workshops that will culminate in the kids having their artwork hung.”
Brick Street Poetry wants to raise $5,000 to renovate the Indianapolis lot. The Indiana Housing & Community Development Authority has agreed to donate another $5,000 when the goal is met. Brinkman said the objective of the project is to foster a love of art in young children.
“People who experience this kind of thing when they’re young are people who continue to do it throughout their lifetime,” Brinkman said. “It’s giving them the experience of being at a poetry workshop and creating a piece of artwork so that they don’t think, ‘Oh, an art gallery is not a place I should go.’ We want them to experience this.”
