Tales from the Monument

As we move closer to warmer days in 2026, we’re excited to look back at the success of SPARK on the Circle in 2025 — Big Car Collaborative’s fifth year of activating the Circle as a restorative and fun public place for people from all walks of life. 

This collaboration between arts nonprofit Big Car Collaborative, Downtown Indy Alliance, and the City of Indianapolis Department of Metropolitan Development once again welcomed more than 60,000 visitors to relax, play, connect, and engage with art and artists.

In 2025, SPARK ran from May 31 to Sept. 28, operating daily from 11 a.m. to dusk on the northwest quadrant of Monument Circle in Downtown Indianapolis, and ran a special holiday-themed version on select weekends in November and December.

And 2025 marked the third year the SPARK park occupied a full quadrant of Monument Circle, following 2023 and 2024, and marking the fifth overall year, with 2015 and 2022 serving as smaller versions. 

Check out the full SPARK 2025 report here.

Notable insights from SPARK on the Circle’s 2025 data collection include:

• Hosted 61,744 visitors
• Offered 203 programs
• Had an average of 437 daily visitors
• Mailed more than 5,291 postcards around the world
• 99% of visitors felt welcomed at the Circle
• 89% of visitors felt more relaxed or less stressed after visiting
• 79% of visitors felt better physically after visiting
• 147 artists were paid a total of $225,780 for their work on and for the Circle

SPARK 2025 featured two artists-in-residence who hosted unique public programs:

Bryn Jackson is an Indianapolis-based multidisciplinary artist and curator. He presented ALT(R) at SPARK, a site-responsive exchange that used scent to explore memory, presence, and what history leaves unsaid. Developed in connection with the Soldiers and Sailors Monument’s themes of triumph and permanence, the work countered stone with breath and ephemerality. Visitors were invited to receive a custom perfume — made from botanicals rooted in South and Southeast Asian traditions — in exchange for anonymously writing down one thing they wished they had said. Through this intimate ritual, ALT(R) transformed public space into a living archive, carried on the body and released into the air, inviting participants to embody remembrance beyond fixed monuments.

Danny Marquis is a multi-instrumentalist musician with a specialty in percussion living in Indianapolis. Marquis led a live, improvisational performance of Terry Riley’s composition In C, welcoming musicians of all skill levels to perform alongside listeners in a large, inclusive ensemble. Selected in response to the rise of artificial music, the 1964 composition emphasizes human choice, listening, and real-time interaction — elements that only live performance can fully realize. The event concluded with spontaneous, celebratory soundmaking led by Marquis, marking the close of SPARK through collective music-making.

In July, SPARK partnered with Indy Arts Council and the WNBA All-Star 2025 Host Committee to present a weekend full of programming in celebration of Indianapolis’ hosting of the 2025 AT&T WNBA All-Star. All-Star Arts & Culture at SPARK brought more than 5,200 visitors to the Circle, with a special themed market, activities, and musical performances. In addition, SPARK and the Indy Arts Council commissioned Indianapolis-based artist Tasha Beckwith to create two special postcard designs for the event.

SPARK Holidays on the Circle continued for a second year in 2025. From Nov. 29 through Dec. 21, more than 9,300 visitors enjoyed festive experiences including visits with Santa and Mrs. Claus, live musical performances, sending letters to the North Pole, and hot chocolate from the container café.

Several local artists offered free workshops to SPARK visitors throughout the season. These activities, artists, and organizations included:

• Fiber art with Mary Jo
• Cyanotypes with Aurora PhotoCenter 
• Zines with Quinn Tailor
• Drum Circles with The Percussive Arts Society
• Henna with Pam
• Watercolor with India Hines
• Ceramic Painting with Stephanie Williams
• 2D & 3D art with Giselle Trujillo
• Bookmark workshop with Dillon Imel
• and more

SPARK continued to present Lunch Break Live, sponsored by Lake City Bank, every Wednesday from noon to 1 p.m., with local musicians including:

• Gary Martinez
• Sylvia Thomas
• Kara Cole
• Clockwork Janz
• Regan
• Jesse Lee
• Keith Beatty
• Peyton Womock
• Rodrigo Hernandez
• Allison Victoria
• and others

Other significant events and activities that happened include:

• Original Farmers’ Market
• Big Gay Pride Market
• Indy Strawberry Festival
• Make Music Day
• 38th Infantry Division Band Summer Concert
• India Day
• A SPARK of Magic
• Baile Monumental
• “What Nature Brings” puppet show

In 2025, Dr. Cara Courage — a U.K.-based culture, communities, and place expert, and internationally recognized placemaking thought leader — revisited SPARK and published two blog essays reflecting on its impact. SPARK is Art: Curated Encounters for the City and SPARK Lives Here: The Spirit of Indianapolis show how SPARK functions as a public art space that encourages social connection. Dr. Courage has researched Big Car since 2015 and continues to lift up SPARK as an example of how art and placemaking can impact communities.

Thank you to the many artists, visitors, partners, and funders who helped make SPARK on the Circle 2025 happen!

And, if you’d like to support SPARK, consider making a tax-deductible donation here.

When SPARK first appeared on Monument Circle in downtown Indianapolis in 2015, it may have been easy to mistake for a summer program of casual activities. Look a little past the first impression and you’ll see SPARK is not a backdrop to life in the Circle, it is art unfolding through play, encounter, and exchange.

A Curated Social Practice

SPARK is curated and authored by Big Car Collaborative, the Indianapolis arts organization long recognised for its leadership in socially engaged art and placemaking. SPARK — an ongoing partnership with the City of Indianapolis and the Downtown Indy Alliance — is not merely incidental sociability, nor public entertainment. It’s much more. 

Big Car’s team of staff artists, working in design, writing, performance, and more, builds a framework in the circle’s expanse that is treated as both canvas and stage. Objects, seating, and interventions are placed not for decoration but as everyday props that spark interaction. From a ping pong table to lunchtime poetry, to a procession, to a making workshop, SPARK shifts art’s focus from the object — what is made — to the encounter — what happens between people.

Big Car’s authorship is visible in this structuring. The choices of what to install, who to invite, and how to pace the unfolding of the program are aesthetic decisions. Just as a curator arranges artworks in a gallery, Big Car arranges conditions for people to encounter one another differently in public space. This is not accidental conviviality. It is a designed and durational art practice, steeped in reflexivity, artistic judgment, and collaborative authorship.

Claiming Place in the Canon

Social practice art (put very simply, creative work where the process of people coming together is the art) has often been under-recognized in comparison to architecture or design when it operates in public space. The architect of a plaza may be celebrated, while the artist who activates, nurtures and evolves its use is overlooked. SPARK challenges this imbalance by demonstrating that curating social life is itself an art form, no less rigorous than sculpture or painting.

In the lineage of socially engaged art in the States, SPARK belongs alongside projects such as Allan Kaprow’s 1960s “happenings” where audiences became the artwork and Suzanne Lacy’s “new genre public art” in the 1980s and ‘90s, where artists worked directly with communities on issues that mattered to them. This is seen also with Rick Lowe’s Project Row Houses in Houston and Theaster Gates’ Rebuild Foundation in Chicago. 

SPARK’s  contribution is distinctive. It reimagines a civic monument not through permanent alteration but through temporary inhabitation. The monument remains unchanged in stone, but profoundly altered in meaning as people experience it as a place of play, dialogue, and co-creation. It resonates with American philosopher and educator John Dewey’s idea of “art as experience,” where meaning is made in doing, and where everyday life is reframed through creative encounters.

I first experienced SPARK in its opening year, 2015, when I was in Indianapolis researching Big Car’s practice for my PhD. I spent days at Monument Circle, observing how a civic landmark was reshaped through everyday encounters. What I saw was not a temporary festival but a carefully curated artwork that treated public life itself as material. Since then, I have followed Big Car’s work closely, writing about SPARK in Arts in Place (2017) and keeping in touch with the organization as it has evolved. This long view allows me to see SPARK not just as a series of seasonal programs, but as a sustained contribution to the international conversation on socially engaged art.

Social Benefit Through Artistic Means

SPARK is not an isolated festival but part of Big Car’s long trajectory of socially engaged work across Indianapolis. The collaborative has cultivated a deliberate aesthetic strategy that invites participation and, in the process, leaves people seeing both themselves and each other differently. 

Big Car’s ethos is that even brief engagement can be transformative. A passer-by who joins in painting or conversation may, in that moment, see themselves differently: I am an artist today. Yet too — participants do not need to name their actions as art to benefit from them. What matters is that the process is conceived and held by artists, who use aesthetic tools to generate access, reduce barriers, and open civic dialogue.

SPARK reshapes how people imagine their role in public life and how they relate to their city long after the moment has passed. This authorship matters. Without Big Car’s framing, SPARK would be simply a civic amenity. With it, SPARK is part of the canon of socially engaged art, offering both social benefit and artistic innovation.

As socially engaged art has matured internationally, it has faced the risk of being absorbed into policy jargon or reduced to instrumental outcomes. SPARK resists this by remaining rooted in artistic process. It is art first, even as it delivers civic and social benefits. Its success lies in holding these together, and in doing so it has helped shape new understandings of what art in public space can be.

Looking Forward

Ten years on, SPARK still reimagines the Circle. Each season it remakes the familiar into something alive: a monument that becomes a meeting place, a plaza that becomes a playground, a civic space that becomes a stage. In both the US and the UK, public spaces have become increasingly contested, with rising polarisation, social isolation, and pressures on civic life. 

Against this backdrop, SPARK matters all the more. It models a different possibility: people sharing space without barriers, talking to strangers, and seeing themselves as part of a larger whole. These encounters may seem modest, but they are acts of civic imagination. They suggest that another kind of public culture is possible, one based not on division, but on participation and care.

In a cultural landscape that can overlook the value of socially engaged art, SPARK is proof of its power. It does not monumentalize form; it monumentalizes encounter. And in doing so, it secures its place in the canon of socially engaged art — not as footnote, but as exemplar.

Dr. Cara Courage is a culture, communities, and place consultant, and placemaking practitioner, writer, and broadcaster. Her PhD research (2014–2017) focused on Big Car, the Indianapolis-based socially engaged art and placemaking organisation with which she has continued to collaborate and research ever since. She is Editor-Convenor of the Routledge Handbook of Placemaking (2021) and Co-Editor-Convenor of Trauma-Informed Placemaking (Routledge, 2024).

A recent visit to Indianapolis reminded me all over again how special this city is — its people, its energy, its generosity of spirit. Retracing familiar ground, I found myself once more thinking about SPARK and how it transforms the iconic heart of the city that is Monument Circle into something more than a landmark — into a place alive with the rhythm of everyday life.

Indianapolis has always had a strong sense of community, that “Midwest neighborliness” visitors (myself very much included) notice and residents treasure. And SPARK celebrates this. The lunchtime regulars, the office workers, the musicians and poets, the volunteers who make the space sing.

I first experienced SPARK in its opening year, 2015, when I was in Indianapolis researching Big Car Collaborative’s practice for my PhD. I spent days at Monument Circle, observing how a civic landmark was reshaped through everyday encounters. 

What I saw was not a temporary festival but a carefully curated artwork that treated public life itself as material. Since then, I have followed Big Car’s work closely, writing about SPARK in Arts in Place (2017) and keeping in touch with the organization as it has evolved. This long view allows me to see SPARK as a sustained contribution to the international conversation on placemaking and socially engaged art.

SPARK has never been about spectacle. Its beauty lies in the ordinary, the small, human moments that make Indy feel like home. Whether it’s a game of ping pong, a quiet poem at lunchtime, or children drawing with chalk under the monument’s shadow, SPARK reminds us that creativity lives beyond galleries or stages. 

It’s here in the ways people use and care for their city. And it’s not about changing the city. It’s about seeing the city and its people at their best. It doesn’t import ideas from elsewhere. It grows them from the ground up.

Big Car’s current work at the Circle — in partnership with the Downtown Indy Alliance and the City of Indianapolis — shows how art can bring out the pride that already lives here. The sound of laughter across the plaza, a smile between strangers, a family lingering a little longer: these are the markers of a city that knows its worth.

I’ve heard SPARK described as a “living room” for downtown. But perhaps it’s better thought of as Indy’s front porch — that very American place of welcome, hospitality, and easy connection. Just as the porch has long been where neighbors meet, share stories, and watch the world go by, Monument Circle becomes a shared threshold between public and private life, where everyone is welcome to sit for a while and feel part of this place they call home.

With SPARK, every visitor — whether a lifelong Hoosier or someone just passing through — finds a sense of belonging. It shows that joy itself is a civic strength, and that pride in place isn’t something to be built. It’s something to be felt. Success isn’t measured in visitor numbers alone, but in smiles, conversations, and the quiet sense that downtown is ours. Big Car’s artists have always understood that these moments are anything but trivial. They are what give a city its heart. 

And so, as I walk Indy again, I see SPARK in the spirit of the place, in the way Indianapolis carries itself: confident, kind, and quietly proud. In celebrating the everyday — the shared bench, the impromptu chat, the laughter over a lunchtime poem — SPARK celebrates Indianapolis itself.

Dr. Cara Courage — a culture, communities, and place consultant based in the United Kingdom — has published three books on placemaking and socially engaged art with Routledge. Named in the top 10 of place thinkers worldwide, Courage has studied Big Car’s work in Indianapolis since 2015.

Following the Downtown Indy Alliance Circle of Lights® presented by IBEW Local 481, SPARK: Holidays on the Circle returns to bring festive cheer to Downtown! Join us at the northwest quadrant of Monument Circle every Saturday and Sunday from Nov. 29 through Dec 21, from 4-8 p.m.

Meet Santa, mail your letters to the North Pole, sip hot cocoa from the Container Café, enjoy live musical performances, and take in the dazzling holiday lights and decor on the Circle. It’s the perfect spot to celebrate the season with family and friends!

The performance schedule is as follows, each from 5-6 p.m.:

• Saturday, Nov. 29 — Mina Keohane
• Sunday, Nov. 30 — Keith Beatty
• Saturday, Dec. 6 — Outside the Box Choir
• Sunday, Dec. 7 —Indianapolis Children’s Choir
• Saturday, Dec. 13 — AlejCat
• Sunday, Dec. 14 — AlejCat
• Saturday, Dec. 20 — Freetown Village Singers
• Sunday, Dec. 21 — The Idle Hands

The Santa schedule is as follows, each from 4-8 p.m.:

• Saturday, Nov. 29 — Circle of Lights Santa – Ty Stover
• Sunday, Nov. 30 — Circle of Lights Santa – Ty Stover
• Saturday, Dec. 6 — Circle of Lights Santa – Ty Stover
• Sunday, Dec. 7 — Indiana Black Santa – Josiah McCrustion
• Saturday, Dec. 13 — Circle of Lights Santa – Ty Stover
• Sunday, Dec. 14 — Indiana Black Santa – Josiah McCrustion
• Saturday, Dec. 20 — Circle of Lights Santa – Ty Stover
• Sunday, Dec. 21 — Circle of Lights Santa – Ty Stover

SPARK on the Circle is made possible by Big Car Collaborative, Downtown Indy Alliance, and the Indianapolis Department of Metropolitan Development, in coordination with the Indiana War Memorials Commission.

“In C” is a seminal minimalist composition created by Terry Riley while he rode the bus. Now you can hear it performed live — and maybe even join in  — on Sunday, Sept. 28 at 4 p.m. at Monument Circle. 

Organized by Indianapolis musician Danny Marquis — one of this year’s SPARK on the Circle artists in residence — this improvisational performance of “In C” is free to enjoy. 

If you’d like to play along, join us by 3:30 p.m. at the SPARK park and bring your instrument. Whatever it is. We’ll provide sheet music for Riley’s 1964 composition that directs any number of musicians to repeat a series of 53 melodic fragments in a guided improvisation. Don’t worry, Danny will show you how it works. 

“In C” is intended for an ensemble of as many players on as many instruments as possible. And  performers can be at any skill level — as long as they’re willing to listen big and simply play.

PLAY! Make sound for the joy and love of it. Listen to what emerges.

When Riley was writing the song on the bus, perhaps the rumblings of the engine and the many sounds of the city combined in such a way that a greater melody could emerge. It’s from precisely this kind of overlapping potential chaos that “In C” gains its signature sound.

See you at Monument Circle on Sept. 28!

Celebrate the AT&T WNBA All-Star 2025 coming to Indy’s home court with special events and activities at SPARK on the Circle!

Enjoy live performances by local musicians, browse the SPARK All-Star art market, make friendship bracelets, send specially designed postcards, and take part in fun, family-friendly activities!

Thursday, July 17

• Live Performances — 4 – 6pm
  • 4 – 4:45 pm — Regan
  • 5 – 5:45 pm — Hey Judy

Friday, July 18

• SPARK All-Star Art Market Day 1 — noon – 5pm
• Live Performances — 11am – 3:15pm
  • • 11 – 11:30 am — Akustico
    • 1 – 1:30 pm — Hannah Hadley
    • 2:45 – 3:15 pm — Mina Keohane
• Bubble Jim — 2 – 4pm
• Bracelet Making — 11am – 6pm
• Free Postcard Activity 11am – 8pm
• Forensic Friends — 2 – 6pm

Saturday, July 19

• SPARK All-Star Art Market Day 2 — 9am – 2pm
• Live Performances — 12:15 – 6pm
  • 12:15 – 12:45 pm — Sister Sinjin
  • 2 – 2:30 pm — Sofi Parker
  • 3:45 – 4:15 pm — Jennasen
  • 5:30 – 6 pm — Allison Victoria
• Face Painting — 9am – 12pm
• Free Postcard Activity — 9am – 8pm
• Bracelet Making — 9am – 6pm
• As You Wish — 9am – 3pm

AND, we’re sharing special audio programming celebrating the AT&T WNBA All-Star 2025 game on SPARK’s “Circle Sounds” stream and on 99.1 FM WQRT. You’ll hear poems and quotes that spotlight the voices of women — past, present, and future — in the spirit of Indy’s Home Court.

Learn more about All-Star Arts & Culture activations on Indy Art Council’s website.

All-Star Arts & Culture at SPARK on the Circle is made possible through the SPARK partners (Big Car Collaborative, Downtown Indy, Inc., and the City of Indianapolis Department of Metropolitan Development — in cooperation with the Indiana War Memorials Commission), Indy Arts Council with the City of Indianapolis, and the WNBA All-Star 2025 Host Committee.

More than 70,000 visitors enjoyed family friendly, fun, relaxing, and artful entertainment right in the heart of Indianapolis in 2024 as part of SPARK on the Circle.

This collaboration between Big Car Collaborative, Downtown Indy, and the City of Indianapolis Department of Metropolitan Development once again created a much-enjoyed restorative public place where people of all walks of life relaxed, played, socialized, and engaged with art and artists — all for free.

In 2024, SPARK ran from June 1 until Nov. 4 (and through Dec. 22 for the holiday version) from 11 a.m. to sunset on the northwest quadrant of Monument Circle in Downtown Indianapolis.

This marked the fourth year of project, with 2023, 2022, and 2015 version preceding it.

Here are some highlights from our 2024 data collection at SPARK:

• Hosted more than 71,969 visitors
• Offered 270 program opportunities
• Had 420 average daily visitors
•  8,259 postcards were mailed for free all around the world from SPARK
• 99% of visitors felt welcomed at the Circle
• 62% of visitors had a conversation with someone new at SPARK
• 89% of visitors felt better mentally after visiting
• SPARK paid 162 artists a total of $333,800 for their work on the Circle

Check out the full SPARK 2024 report here.

In addition, SPARK won two awards in 2024: The People’s Choice Award from the Indy Chamber’s Monumental Awards and Accelerate Indiana Municipalities’s Aim Placemaking Award. Watch the videos for the Monumental Award here and the Aim Placemaking award here.

In 2024, SPARK extended its stay on the Circle with Holidays on the Circle every Saturday and Sunday from Nov. 30 through December 22. Over 6,300 visitors enjoyed meeting Santa and Mrs. Claus, live musical performances, sending letters to the North Pole, and hot chocolate from the container café.

Taylor Swift weekend — in coordination with the star’s November Indianapolis performances — yielded SPARK’s biggest turnout for the season with more than 10,000 visitors. Patrons made friendship bracelets, created specially-themed postcards, helped fiber artist Mary Jo Bayliss create a collaborative pom-pom artwork, enjoyed live music, got Taylor-themed face paint, and played fun games.

In addition, SPARK hosted a month of late nights during Thursdays in October. Open until 10 p.m., visitors experienced additional fun experiences like a printmaking worksop, bubble activities, live music, a screening of a live audiovisual poem, Boot Scoot line dancing, and more.

Several local artists offered free workshops to SPARK visitors. These activities and artists include:

• Clock-making with Kris Komakech
• Drum-playing with Rob Funkhouser
• Fiber art with Mary Jo Bayliss
• Poetry and art with John Clark
• Pyrography with Nasreen Khan
• Pottery with Stephanie Williams
• Cyanotype with Aurora PhotoCenter
• and more

Every Wednesday, SPARK hosted “Lunch Break Live” — sponsored by Lake City Bank — performances from noon to 1 p.m. These performances supported local musicians including:

• Peyton Womock
• Keith Beatty
• Fred Miller III
• Allison Victoria
• Yuri Rodríguez
• Chreece producers
• Kara Cole
• and more

Other significant events and activities that happened include:

• The Indy Gay Market
• Wake Up Wednesdays
• Strawberry Fest
• The Original Farmers’ Market
• National Night Out
• Indy Humanities Story Time
• Kids Day
• Live Music with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra
• A SPARK of Magic

Thank you to all of the wonderful artists, visitors, partners, and funders who helped make SPARK on the Circle 2024 happen.

Following Circle of Lights®, SPARK: Holidays on the Circle will feature themed musical performances and appearances from Santa Claus within the northwest bollards of Monument Circle every Saturday and Sunday from 4-8 p.m. Nov. 30 through December 22. During SPARK festivities, hot coco and coffee will be available for purchase from the Container Café. SPARK is made possible byBig Car Collaborative, Downtown Indy, Inc, and the Indianapolis Department of Metropolitan Development with support from the Capital Improvement Board and the Indiana War Memorials Commission.

The performance schedule is as follows, each from 5-6pm:

• Saturday, Nov. 30 – Cathy Morris – Electric Violin
• Sunday, Dec. 1 – Mina Keohane – Keyboard
• Saturday, Dec. 7 – Indianapolis Opera 
• Sunday, Dec. 8 – Indianapolis Opera 
• Saturday, Dec. 14 – Outside the Box Choir
• Sunday, Dec. 15 – Freetown Village
• Saturday, Dec. 21 – Adam Shuntich 
• Sunday, Dec. 22 – The Missing No’s

Find the full holiday schedule at CircleSpark.org/calendar.

Get ready for an amazing weekend full of fun in celebration of Taylor Swift’s much-anticipated visit to Indianapolis!

SPARK will be hosting free events and activities Friday Nov. 1, Saturday Nov. 2, and Sunday Nov. 3 for the whole family.

Events include:

• Helping local artist Mary Jo Bayliss with a collaborative Swiftie-themed installation artwork
• Decorating & mailing locally-designed Taylor-themed postcards anywhere in the world for free
• Making + trading friendship bracelets
• Vibing to live music
• Playing fun games
• Getting themed face paint
• and more!

Find the full weekend schedule here.

Follow @SparkPlaces on Instagram for more.

Photos:

1. Taylor Swift postcard designed by SPARK Artist Lauren Pontenberg

2. Part of Mary Jo Bayliss’ collaborative Taylor Swift themed installation artwork

3. Taylor Swift postcard designed by SPARK Artist Katie Faust

4. Face painting at SPARK

5. Part of the design of Mary Jo Bayliss’ collaborative Taylor Swift themed installation artwork

SPARK on the Circle will be open until 10pm for “Late Nights at SPARK” every Thursday from Oct. 3 to Oct. 24, 2024!

Late night Thursdays will have special events and activities, like visits from bubble performer Bubble Jim, film and animation screenings, live music, interactive projects, and more!

The schedule is as follows:

Oct. 3
– 4-6pm: Photo printmaking workshop with SPARK Staff Artist Sarah Montanez Hidalgo
– 6:30-8:30pm: Live WQRT DJ MIX with Averie Chávez of “CoolYum Radio”

Oct. 10
– 4-6pm: Performance from Bubble Jim
– 8-9pm: Screening of “Symbiotic Hum,” a live audiovisual poem by Jessica Dunn and Landon Caldwell

Oct. 17
– 4-6pm: Performance from Bubble Jim
– 8-9pm: Silent movie screening with live score

Oct. 24
– 4-6pm: “As You Wish” project
– 7-10pm: “Boot Scoot” line dancing + music event

We hope to see you there! 🌃🌙

Follow @SparkPlaces on Instagram for updates

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SPARK is a partnership between Big Car Collaborative, Downtown Indy, the City of Indianapolis Department of Metropolitan Development, and the Indiana War Memorials Commission, and is funded by the Capital Improvement Board.

At Big Car, we approach our work at the Circle as a site- and community-specific socially engaged art and creative placemaking project. The SPARK on the Circle pop-up park was collaboratively designed with Indianapolis-based Merritt Chase to be a restorative public place where people of all walks of life can relax, play, socialize, and engage with art and artists in the heart of our city.