Spirit & Place began in 1996 as the Spirit & Place Festival, emerging from the Project on Religion and Urban Culture—an initiative of The Polis Center at IUPUI (now IU Indianapolis). The project explored how religion and community shape one another in Greater Indianapolis. With support from Butler University, the first festival featured a public conversation between John Updike, Kurt Vonnegut, and Dan Wakefield, alongside eight additional discussions and cultural events.

The annual, multi-day Spirit & Place Festival remains the organization’s cornerstone. Each year, cultural, congregational, and civic organizations—as well as local artists and creatives—come together around a central theme to present exhibits, performances, workshops, and conversations grounded in the arts, humanities, and religion.

Over time, Spirit & Place evolved from a festival-focused initiative into a year-round civic organization, with significant growth and transformation beginning in the 2010s.

In 2013–14, Spirit & Place undertook a community analysis to better understand its role as a potential agent for change. This period also marked the beginning of more intentional work around race, including a 2013 “pitch fest” that invited community-led ideas to improve race relations, supported by a $20,000 award.

These efforts informed a major organizational restructuring in 2015, including the expansion of staff capacity and the development of an explicit anti-racist framework. As its capacity grew, so did its year-round programming, with initiatives such as Gentrify: The Good, Bad, and Ugly (2016, in partnership with Kheprw Institute), Powerful Conversations on Race (2017), Civic Saturday (2018), and The Corona Dialogues (2020). Throughout this work, Spirit & Place has prioritized transparency and accountability, sharing public statements and reports, including its 2021 Equity/Anti-Racism Report.

Art-centered community-building initiatives also emerged during this period through partnerships with Kheprw Institute, Groundwork Indy, and EMC Arts. These efforts focused on supporting individuals returning from incarceration and youth aging out of foster care.

In 2021, Spirit & Place transitioned from a traditional Steering Committee model to Listening Teams—an approach that deepened community input and, in 2025, led to the formation of a Community Advisory Committee. That same period marked the retirement of longtime director Pam Blevins Hinkle and the creation of the Pam Blevins Hinkle Creative Catalyst Fund, which supports festival partners in their creative and capacity-building work.

Administratively, Spirit & Place moved from The Polis Center to the IU Indianapolis School of Liberal Arts in 2020. In 2024, it transitioned to IU Research, securing—for the first time in its history—direct university support for staffing. These shifts reflect a growing institutional commitment to sustaining and expanding Spirit & Place’s work in the community.

Click here to see our 30th anniversary timeline PDF.