Institute for Civic Leadership and Mayoral Archive

Transcript Ted Frantz 0:03 On October 9, 2013 former Indiana Senator Richard Lugar sat down with an up and coming Mayor from South Bend named Pete Buttigieg. Their conversation served as the keynote for the first annual Richard M. Fairbanks Symposium on Civic Leadership at the University of Indianapolis. The discussion covers an overview of Lugar’s entrance into politics, pointers about how to build governing coalitions Robert Kennedy’s April 4, 1968 visit to Indianapolis, as well as a memorable exchange about how much Lugar and Buttigieg valued their training in the humanities. Listeners can be reminded of Lugar’s photographic memory, as well as Buttigieg unique ability to frame issues of leadership. Finally, the two discussed the ways in which executive experience is necessary in politics. In 2019 two events conspired to increase interest in the lugar Buttigieg conversation. First, Buttigieg became one of many Democrats vying for the 2020 presidential nomination. Second, on April 28 Senator Lugar died at the age of 87 the longest serving and most distinguished senator in Indiana history. Lugar was renowned as an unparalleled statesman. His close relationship with the University of Indianapolis was one of his many lasting legacies. Together with Symposium partner Indiana Humanities, the Institute for Civic Leadership and Mayoral Archives is proud to release the entirety of this memorable keynote. The University of Indianapolis is thankful for the support provided by the Richard M. Fairbanks Foundation, the Lilly Endowment and other individual philanthropic sponsors. If you like this conversation, be sure to check out all of our other podcasts on your favorite podcast provider. Pete Buttigieg 1:46 Well, thank you for the opportunity to be here, and it’s polite, I think, in a situation like this, to say that you’re humbled when often a politician means they feel the opposite of humble. They feel proud. But I’m seriously humbled to find myself in this context. Some similarities were mentioned. Senator Lugar studied at Pembroke College in Oxford. So did I. Senator Lugar was a young Mayor as I am. He was a naval intelligence officer as I am. Senator Lugar also more responsible than any other individual, through a great diplomatic triumph, for the destruction of over 7000 nuclear weapons from the United States and Russia, meaning he’s one of the people walking this earth most responsible for having perhaps prevented a nuclear disaster in Our time. And I read a book about Russia not long ago, all of which is to say that this is very humbling. So in order to try to level the playing field a little bit at the beginning of the conversation, I was hoping I could pull you back to the to the first days of your administration as a young mayor, when there is something that I think we would have had in common, which is that experience of coming through the door the mayor’s office the first time, something you’ve prepared for for quite a while, you’ve campaigned for, the voters have trusted you with it. You know exactly where you want to take the city generally, but you’ve got to figure out how to spend your first moments and first days in office. And I was very interested to know how you saw the challenges shaping up, and how you prioritized your first few days when you were actually at the helm. Richard Lugar 3:30 Well Pete, I had the benefit of serving on the school board for three years before the mayor business that came about because people came to the west side factory where my brother and I were trying to resurrect the family business. As a Lugar, you got to run for the school board. Our kids are just getting dirt, and we need somebody to stand up for a month. I frankly, didn’t know where the school board met, quite apart from what they did, I was flattered by paying any attention, but Char, my wife, had four boys headed to the public schools. That’s something you probably ought to do. So I ran and found out, because I’ve been so preoccupied with the factory and the farm, that a civil rights revolution was on the horizon in Indianapolis. I was apparent in that race. I emerged as one of the seven people in that large situation. Gertrude Page, an African American woman, got the most votes, and she became a strong ally, as we began to tackle first of all, breakfast for latchkey children, children that had no parents there and they were, matter of fact, sick years because they got anything to eat before school immediately. This is the first thing we tried to do. Chamber of Commerce in Indianapolis. At that time, said, “Lugar, you’ve got to get through your head, we have never taken one dime of federal aid in Indianapolis, and we’re not about to start now because of your crazy idea with latchkey children and breakfast and so forth” By a four to three vote by the board, we did take up the latchkey children and the breakfast. And this is the beginning of one controversy after another, which included trying to begin desegregating the Indianapolis Public School System long before the court orders and what have you, the Shortridge Plan we adopted. The ability anybody in the whole city that come to Shortridge for the freshman year, black, white or anybody else. What had been a 90% black population, 10% white became in that year 50/50, like water going uphill in educational journals. But on the other hand, extremely controversial, as you can imagine. So, in the midst of all of this, the Republican Party in Indianapolis had come to the conclusion, I suspect, that there had not been a Republican mayor for 20 years, and the prospects demographically were there not going to be for the next 20 for that matter. Keith Bulen was a brilliant tactician, became County Chairman and asked me to run because I suppose I had already become so controversial, there was so much publicity surrounding all of these battles, that he thought at least there might be some hope of a breakthrough of this sort. And I’ll not go through a whole campaign, but nevertheless, I defeated John Barden, a fine gentleman who was the Democratic mayor then former state policeman. But before we got to that point, I had already done some homework and found as I talked to people from other cities in the country that Indianapolis along with Detroit and Buffalo and Pittsburgh and St Louis and so forth were all headed downhill, and they were going downhill in a hurry as a matter of fact, simply because properties were being abandoned, there were fewer and fewer jobs. The resources of the community seemed to be diminishing. It was a phenomenon in terms of an urban demise that was difficult. I found in Nashville, Tennessee and in Jacksonville, Florida, people had envisioned an expansion of the inner city to the suburbs. Different patterns in both cases. But nevertheless, this was intriguing. So we talked about that in the campaign about greater Indianapolis, about a flourishing situation going onward and upward, and most people had no idea what in the world we were talking about. And it was certainly an upset win. I suspect we finally made it across the finish line. But having done that, I started out it was a campaign year, then in 1968 following the 67 election, went to Lincoln Days all over the state, or to places where I would meet with people who were going to be state representatives or state senators. And I don’t want to make too much out of this, but in the course of a year of time, I had met with all 100 members of the General Assembly, all 50 state senators, talking about what was going to be called Unigov. And the idea was that the civil government of Indianapolis and Marion County would be combined. There would be one mayor, 25 members of the council, all the money on the same table, everybody around the same table, with various districts almost guaranteeing there will be black representatives as well as white ones. And this, to say the least, consumed the entire year in terms of the persuasion coming up to the legislature, which was a battle and a story all by itself, but in the event, finally, we got Governor Whitcomb to sign the bill and got Governor Bowen, who was then Speaker Bowen, to let go of it, I made almost a fatal miscue, I became so irritated with the Bowen and I asked all the citizens of Indianapolis to call him on the telephone down to the State House, and many responded to that and jammed the whole state house with all these calls. But I apologized profusely and tried to get back on the best side of things. Anyway, Unigov was passed, but then it was in the end of it, the Supreme Court of Indiana had to rule we were involved in that. And ultimately we had re election campaign in ’71 in which people said we didn’t get a referendum on this. You did it all by the legislature. We are a creature of the state, but nevertheless, we should have had a vote. So that was the vote. There were more votes cast in that election than they’ve ever been cast again in Indianapolis in the mayoralty election, and we won roughly 60/40 and that settled the issue, but it made all the difference, I would just say, in the life of the city, as immediately, all kinds of investment came in. People began to build the buildings they had envisioned for a long time, we began to clear away all the debris in the downtown area so the people had land. Brilliant people like David Meeker, brilliant tactician for architecture. And same time, why, President Nixon, who had been elected in ’68 discovered Indianapolis was the largest Republican city. John Lindsay, New York having gone to the Democratic Party. So as a result, his first trip as President with Mrs. Nixon was out here. Some may find that’s a good idea. Some may find that was dubious, but historically, it was important, because Nixon was so excited about the whole business that in the city county building, on our way up to the 25th floor, he said, I want you in Mount. Moynihan. This is Daniel Patrick Moynihan, then an advisor to go to Brussels immediately represent the United States at the cities of the world conference got all kinds of problems there and not lacking audacity about this, I went with Moynihan, and then I invited all the mayors of the world to come to Indianapolis the next year for the so called first international conference on cities. And 50 responded, some from Japan, from Europe, Latin America all came out here revived many of the cultural communities of who had not really thought of each other as Bosnians or Serbs or what have you, for years, but sort of came out of the woodwork, and it made a very exciting difference in terms of the international outlook of Indianapolis then, as we all began to think about exporting and trying to bring together that kind of business, I was elected president National League of Cities. And this led to a whole host of other experiences, which we’ll not go into in great detail. But finally, to the battle for revenue sharing. This was the first time, at least during the Nixon period, that the federal government balanced the budget. There was actually a surplus for one year, and the Congress passed a revenue sharing plan. And I mentioned that because I had my heart set on the Market Square Arena, and I needed a way to pay for it. And so the revenue sharing money was the way to pay for it. The federal government paid for it so that we did not have a taxpayer expense at that particular stage. The Pacers were saved. Otherwise would have gone somewhere else. We couldn’t provide that kind of thing. And $20.5 million worth of investment by businesses were pledged for all the buildings around us and the development and so forth. So the property tax base rose again, and I was able to reduce property taxes five years out of the eight that I was mayor, largely due to this expansion and excitement. So in a nutshell, this is why I enjoyed being mayor. It was an exciting times. Pete Buttigieg 13:02 There’s one thing in particular. There’s so much in that, in that story, but one in particular I wanted to unpack a little bit, and that’s the idea of how you try to build consensus or or influence people to do something. You mentioned that you’re elected as a local figure, but in order to get anything done with unigov, you need the entire state legislature to back you. And one of the first things I realized as mayor, first of all, you come in as chief executive of an organization of in our case, smaller city in Indianapolis, but 1000 or so employees, most of them, some of them don’t mind telling you they got underwear older than you and and and you’re supposed to tell them all what to do. And so it’s challenging enough within your own organization and all the people who report to you to try to get everybody on the same page and get them aligned around the same goals, but I very quickly figured out that most of the work in this job was going to involve getting people to do things that you don’t have any authority over them, starting with your own counsel, who, of course, won’t mind reminding you that they’re the legislature, and they don’t report to anybody but the voters. And even more so, if you’re trying to do anything very ambitious, one, one of our biggest efforts right now has to do with a group violence reduction strategy. We’re trying to take a more evidence based approach to how we deal with with gang violence. We used to call it gang violence, and then people said, well, we don’t have gangs in this part of town. I said, What do you have? Said, Well, we have little neighborhood groups so, so now we’re calling it the group violence reduction strategy, but, but one of the the biggest elements of getting anything done was, was you got to have everybody at the table. That’s a federal prosecutor, the county sheriff, the county prosecutor, probate court, stuff. That’s just the law enforcement side. You got to have schools there. You got to have parks. You got to have social services. Pretty soon, I figure out of the 40 people on my commission, only about two of them actually report to me, and if it doesn’t. To operate on a handshake, it doesn’t operate. So I was interested to know whether through the lens of the Unigov experience, or maybe further on, in the Senate, where, of course, you got 100 people, each with their own, their own approach, how you go about getting somebody to do something when they certainly don’t have to? Richard Lugar 15:19 You talk to them, listen more than you talk and find out really where their interests are. But I think likewise, you need to have some ideas. Not just a question of interviewing people and sort of counting heads in the unigov experience, we had an idea. Now it was not an idea that was shared by everybody. As a matter of fact, many of my public meetings here in Indianapolis at that time were with people, particularly in suburbs, who would quote Biblical Scripture as to why this was a dreadful idea. But at the same time we managed this is the time we talk about civility to make sure that we didn’t get into a temper tantrum with anybody. We sort of listened to everybody, even quoting the Bible, as opposed to una gov. And we also, I had to make compromises. I think the panel this morning made a very good point that the public school system did not come into Unigov. That was a situation in which the school corporations simply indicated from the outset that they had the votes in the legislature to stop any such nonsense of that sort, if we thought about it. And so we did not get the schools involved, and we had a police and fire department situation that was sort of fractured for a long while. Did much better with sewers and water mains and other developments, as people in the county really wanted more services of that sort, but lots of compromises along the way, even while we were celebrating with glory of one mayor, one council, one unit of and at the same time the campaign of ’71 that I mentioned was I felt very civil campaign, my opponent, Democrat, on this occasion, side of the fact that we were going to return to neighborhoods, this idea of this vast city and all this encompassing business was very, not really, Hoosier, and we were going to be back to the neighborhoods and all. So all sorts of signs went up, sort of indicating that type of thing, and that a lot of people believed. But I think also underlying a lot of this was the problem. We were working our way through relationships with African Americans and whites in this city. It was the case really around the country, as people observed this and they said, well, two things have been done. These are the cynics who criticized it. All so first of all, Lugar and Bulin and whoever else allied with them have put the Republicans back in charge. That was the whole purpose of this thing. If demographically, the Republicans were never going to win again, if you expand the electorate, why good chance that they might, and they continued to for many years, until Mayor Peterson, I would just simply say that that was very suspicious on the part of many people. Likewise, there was the feeling on the part of some civil rights crusaders. These were the more extreme ones, but they took the position that demographically, Indianapolis, along with a lot of other cities, are going to be ours. And just a few years of time, we’re going to elect the public officials, and we’re going to do so with a pretty strong racial bias of that sort. So how dare you really take the plate off the table before we get our chance at it. And a lot of people wrote a good number of educational doctrines and other papers about all of this for a while that somehow there had been frustration of the black minority, not only by Republicans, but by simply the structure of this situation. But I would just say ultimately, the proof was in the pudding that we the tax base rose so rapidly, the tax cuts, likewise, the facilities sort of coming all around. And I would just inquire of you, Pete, because I know this has been a part of your mission here, but in the old days and Bill would have faced a different problem. But I could go into neighborhoods, and I could see all these houses that have been abandoned and just ramshackle messes and so forth and order. Whatever department I had there, really, to clean the whole thing off. Now I found in later days that probably there were some legal problems, and being so swift sounds kind of nice, yeah, so sort of cleanup. But in the old days, in quotes and so forth, we just went block by block. I would go out, sort of on a cruise and say, Let’s take care of this block today and this one so that eventually we had, then the real estate on which to rebuild, which to take care of things. Plus we didn’t have all the abandoned property, the mess that was generally there. And I just didn’t inquire of you as you took a look at South Bend, because I know you have been attempting to tear down a lot of old houses and what, what was the legal situation you faced? And are really about the public relations situation. It’s, Pete Buttigieg 20:55 it’s amazing to hear the matches between some of what I face and some what you came into. You know, South Bend is a city that, outside of our area, we’re best known for Notre Dame, but we didn’t grow up around education. We grew up around industry back when the Big Three automakers were the big four automakers. Number four was Studebaker, and it was right in south bend. So in many ways, we have the attributes of a company town that lost its company, and we didn’t go all the way down the tubes because of leadership and also because of the universities that we did have, but the legacy of that is that we went from having 130,000 people to having 100 and we simply have more houses than people, and we simply have too many houses. Now I love saving houses whenever possible. My own home is a vacant and abandoned house that I’ve been fixing up my little money pit on the river in South Bend. But it was clear that we weren’t going to be able to preserve all of them, and so we found two categories, as you pointed out, of obstacles. Probably the bigger one is the public relations issue. And people, if you let them will tend to divide along whatever fractures there are, whether it’s economic, political, racial, and will often view fast talking politicians with big ideas through that lens, right? So if I come in as I did and said, Look, this city needs to tackle 1000 houses in 1000 days, or we’re not going to be able to reverse the tide of blight in our neighborhoods. A lot of folks are asking, Well, does that mean that you’re attacking my neighborhood? Now what we found as we started listening more closely was that that was what we were hearing from the politicians from those neighborhoods. What we were hearing from the neighbors from those neighborhoods was, where have you been the last 1020, years? Because what they often weren’t aware of is that these vacant and abandoned properties, they didn’t belong to us. Even if I go tear them down, I still don’t own it. At best, we can clear it out under the unsafe building law, if the building can’t be saved, but it belongs to the bank or the county or the original owner. Sometimes the original owner doesn’t even know that they still own it, because of a pretty nefarious practice, in my view, where a bank will kick the family out, but take a couple years to actually foreclose, so that the taxes and the liens and that sort of thing Go to the family and not to the bank, something that ought to get a look from a state or federal policy perspective. But anyway, even when we clear the house out, we don’t necessarily own it, but until we do, a neighbor who lives across the street or next door to one of those houses views the condition of that house as a direct barometer of how much the city cares about them, right? Never mind that I don’t want that house there either to them. It’s a symbol. It tells them whether or not we care. And what we’ve tried to do is make sure there as many ways as possible for the voice of the neighborhood to be driving our decisions. We literally don’t have enough dollars to clear the houses that we need to clear, so we got to do it in some kind of order. So how do you decide what to do first? Well, one of the things we did was we brought in a team from an outfit called Code for America. If you’ve ever heard of Teach for America. This is a similar idea, but, but it’s for IT people. They call it the Peace Corps for Geeks. And every year they pick 10 cities, and their job is to craft some kind of application, web based app, that will help with city issues. And I pointed out to them that we have a lot of seniors and a lot of low income folks, and whatever they come up. Whatever they come up with should be a technology that’s useful to people, even if they don’t understand how to use the web. What they created was a platform that to make a long story short, they stick a yard sign in the yard of a vacant and abandoned house, and it’s got a number you can call, and when you call that number, you can leave a message about how you feel about that house, whether you think it ought to be torn down in a hurry, whether you think we ought to not tear it down because there’s a chance to save it, or whether you’re willing to do something about it. And that registers, and you actually go to our website, South Bend voices.com, you can hear it. You can click on a property, and you can see and hear all these voices of people, some of whom are seniors who’ve never used a mouse in their lives, but. But, but because it’s phone based, it’s web based to me, but it’s phone based to them, and it draws in the neighborhoods. Because you have to make it clear that what you’re doing is not something you’re doing to the neighborhood, but it’s something you’re doing with the neighborhood and for the neighborhood. And if we can establish that, then I think we’ll be on the right path, and people will begin to take it as a confidence builder when we’re able to address the houses, save the ones we can, clear out the ones we can’t. And the other important thing, of course, is that a vacant lot isn’t that much better than a vacant house, so trying to have a community based approach to what that lot’s going to be, even if the best you can do is have it be a veggie garden for a while, or put in wild flowers, like they do in the medians of the highways in Indiana, because you don’t have to mow them. They smell good, they look pretty good, and they actually help suck up some of the rain water from the ground. They take pressure off the sewer system. So we have to get creative, because the problem is too big to solve overnight. But step one is making sure that everybody understands that those properties aren’t there because the city wants them there. And I think getting that across is a real challenge, and I’m sure you’ve had challenges of having your intentions misjudged, maybe because something looks a little too convenient for you, for somebody who’s looking at it through a political lens, when all you’re trying to do is respond. Richard Lugar 26:21 Well, I’m sure that was probably right, without being self justified, I would say in one of the campaign pledges that I made as I was campaigning was once again to the people on the west side. And I mention that because our factory, Thomas o green company, my grandfather had started out there, was on the west side of Indianapolis. And so the people came and said, you know, in addition to our schools being dumped on, we’re being dumped on all the air pollution. Just somebody settles out here, because every night, they just put a torch to all the refuse down in the southwest Indianapolis and burn it up. And so I pledged that we were going to close the first order of business, the city dump and get into a different mode. Well, at this point, other Republican officials said you just are overstepping altogether, including a couple of prominent judges, and you’re not going to be able to do that so fast. And it came, you know, to the very day that I was sworn in office. And the car the mayor had in those days was given to me. It was an old Cadillac car. A policeman drove it out my first act was to go down to the city dump and sort of a shovel of dirt indicate it was being closed. It took a while, however, as a matter of fact, for that all to occur, and that was that was true of many of these instances in which, by and large, as a public good being served, but not immediately apparent to people. What also happened, very tragically, is in the very first year, on April 4, 1968 it was my birthday that day. This is my we’re just in office three months, and that was the day that Dr Martin Luther King was assassinated. As some of you will recall, Robert Kennedy was campaigning in Indiana that day. I had had asked the Kennedy people not to come to downtown Indianapolis that night, which was their intent, because I said, this is going to be a very difficult, if not dangerous situation, but they literally wanted to come to the heart of Indianapolis, down to 17th and Broadway that particular night to indicate the courage of the candidates and lots of other things. So it was one of these strange occasions in which, fortunately, I had fashioned friendships with two people called Snooki Hendrix and Ben Bell. Now these are what might be called activists, and this occurred because our campaign was successful, but I noticed that all sorts of strange things had happened in some precincts, and so Snooki and Ben said, Well, let me tell you how politics goes. And I said, Well, you tell me, Ben and Snooki took me down to 20th in college, and they said, now here, as a matter of fact, you guys sent out Republican lawyers and they were to be supervising the polls because there were no Republicans around there, but very rapidly, why? Mayor Barton’s brother Patrick took care of that situation by saying civil rights were being violated. So. The Police Department came out and picked up all of these young Republican attorneys who were horrified that their reputations were going to be burnished by all of this, took them down to the jail. Now, fortunately, the sheriff was Lee Eades, a Republican so very rapidly, in the course of two or three hours, I got Lee to release all of these Republicans. They didn’t go back to the polls, however. And so Snooki and Ben were showing me the after effects of of votes that were sort of like 120 to zero and so forth. And so I said, Well, how did, how did this work out? I said, it appears to me maybe there were more votes cast here than there are people living in this neighborhood. They said, not to worry. They said, We all knew how this elderly person of that one would have voted. We voted for them, and this sort of took care of that to make sure everybody was heard and so forth. Well, I was glad we counted the votes already and that I was mayor, listening to how all this was going to be handled. But I mentioned all of this because on the night of April the fourth, I was in the Murad hotel for a banquet of the short reach high school basketball team. My alma mater at short reach, it was a team that was all black, a black coach. And there was a situation which we were celebrating that, but I was also in the maraud hotel, because that’s what the Kennedys were going to come and I sort of had set up a battle command station that was not that far from 17th in Alabama, or what have you, to try to take care of the situation, in fairness, historically, and they couldn’t have done it all, but Ben and Snooki were out there in the crowd down there at 17th, and they were, in fact, counseling people. This is not the time, and made a very large difference as black activists that night, which saved lives in Indianapolis and all sorts of difficulty. You know, the next few days were horrible because people all I was on in one church basement and street corner. What happened after another one of the television channels gave me five minutes every night just to reassure the people we were going to be okay. But it was a very tense situation out in Richmond, Indiana, a refinery blew up, and the Rumors were that already the insurrection had occurred. But this was sort of a tough way to start the mayor business, but I stress the fact that in the campaign, because we had had these associations with these activists, it was very, very important in the history of Indianapolis that at the right time, they stepped forward. Pete Buttigieg 32:55 You mentioned that night, which is one of the most extraordinary course in Indianapolis history, as well as in American history. And it’s remarkable to hear the story behind the story, in the role that that played in keeping the city calm, because I think most people know only the part about Senator Kennedy’s remarks, which was itself extraordinary. He got in front of a room full of people and without condescension, right? He was the one. He was the messenger. He wound up telling a lot of people, a lot of young activists, African Americans, mostly that Dr King had been killed. And he then did something that I think nobody would dare do today. But he did not condescend. He quoted literature. He quoted Aeschylus, actually, there’s this passage, passage that begins that God whose rule it is that he who learns must suffer. And he didn’t quote that part, but he quoted a part where it says, and even in our sleep, pain that cannot forget falls, drop by drop, upon the human heart in our in our own despite against our will, comes wisdom by the awful grace of God and connected with the audience, sharing that which had been a comfort to him when he was processing the death of his own brother, the violent death of his own brother a few years earlier, I happen to know that that was a translation from a book by Edith Hamilton called the Greek way. And I know that because I stumbled on it during a little time I was reading in my office about a year ago, I realized I wasn’t reading anymore, and reading got me everything good in life, and I wasn’t reading much. So we have a new rule that for not much, but four or five hours a week. There’s a requirement my staff has to help me protect just four or five hours when I can hold up and read and not necessarily read about policy, maybe just read about the Greeks, or read history or read poetry, because if you don’t do that, you can lose I think you’re more in on the other. My hand, I’ve never felt so much pressure away from study and scholarship. And it’s a strange thing if you have a scholarly disposition to find yourself in a job that seems almost to actively discourage, either just through scheduling pressure or also through the kind of the culture you’re immersed in tends to discourage reflection and reading and writing, and it brings me to something that I recall from the opportunity that I had to visit your office in Washington, where there’s an entire wall of books. It resembles the office of some of my the professors I most admired, and the kind of books that that I have or would like to have. So I’m interested to know whether you think it’s become any less possible today to be a reflective practitioner, for somebody who practices politics, also to to have a scholarly life or indulge academic instincts, or whether that’s always been a challenge, and there’s always going to be a way to somehow protect or reinforce the importance of doing that for for anybody who makes decisions and anybody who speaks to large numbers of people, Richard Lugar 36:14 I think it’s always been a challenge in public life, but I sort of share your passion for reading and for study, and something that’s been very important in my life, regardless of which you’re you’re in, I admire your discipline and actually setting aside time to do this. But I remember at Oxford for the first time in my life, I really had a block of time in which I could write a novel, and I did. It was it was never published. I got signs from publishers, a lot of promise and so forth, but no cigar. They get a and ultimately, I disposed of the novel. It probably was not a good idea, but still, I had met Joyce, Carey, Graham, Greene, other luminaries over there, because I was deeply interested in the creative arts of how you how you write a novel. So ultimately, I wrote another book called Letters to the next president. And I did that after a very busy year in which I was over supervising the election of Corazon Aquino over Ferdinand Marcos and all the aftermath of that, the problems of apartheid in South Africa, getting the majorities over President Reagan’s veto that brought about, really a change in the relationship that we had there, and a host of other things. And from my standpoint, I wanted to write a book that said what I was thinking at the time, what the resources were, who said what to whom, and so forth, which has turned out to be very important, because each of these are controversial events in the countries that were involved, quite apart from our own politics. But what a thrill it was to actually see my work published, to actually go to book signings. And the thing I always am excited every quarter a small royalty check comes in and char asked, Why in the world, are you still worried about that? I said, char, you don’t understand that’s sort of the beauty of all of this, but, but I think that’s important to take time, and I hope you will do that too as your experiences unfold, because some recollection along the road which is historically accurate, at least from your own point of view, is very important in setting the argument for other historians or other people who may be writing about this sort of thing down the trail. I think one other fact, and seeing bill here just reminds me that right here at UIndy, we had this remarkable program with the five mayors, and that was a time in which we celebrated the fact that for 40 years there had been five mayors, and the flow of activity of the work that each one had done was picked up and augmented by the next. In other words, as a situation we heard today with regard to Republican politics or Indiana situation in Benjamin Harrison’s day. But this was not a question of the next mayor chucking it all out and saying, you know, my way or the highway. Was always a question of really building upon all of that. Bill picked up things and ran for four terms and had a huge impact, but each of the words that were spoken by the mayors were complimentary of the one who had proceeded before, or of the economy of the group. It was a beautiful time, and I was so pleased that they replayed it during the time of the Super Bowl, because for the rest of. The country that was watching Indianapolis at that point, wondering, how do you come to a point where Indianapolis to be selected for the Super Bowl? This wasn’t the total reason, but it was a city, a story of a city, that showed how the whole sports business might have started from from a very small beginning, and moved national and international, and finally led to that glorious time when we entertained the rest of America here. And I cite the five Mayor program that was brought the four right here at UIndy as a very important starter for all that Brandon 40:40 I see Brandon towards back with the microphone. So maybe we could take a little bit of time for questions from the group. After that ring endorsement of humanity, I thought it was a good time. But yeah, I think that it would be a way to have this great opportunity to not allow great folks in the room to chime in with some questions. So. Audience Member 40:59 To both of you. It seems that on the municipal level, the partisanship that we’re seeing really hurt our country today can be overcome. You have to work with people that you know as two people who have accomplished that on the local level, and Senator Lugar you on the international level. What kind of advice do you have for both citizens who are worried about what’s going on in Washington, but also those policy makers that are that are have allowed partisanship and extreme ideology on both sides to to get us into the mess we’re in today? Richard Lugar 41:38 I’ll let Pete handle that. [laughter] Pete Buttigieg 41:43 Well I think it’s certainly the case that in local government, you don’t have the luxury of indulging or retreating into partisan camps nearly as much, because stuff simply has to get done. We need a federal government, and the shutdown of the federal government is dreadful, but if a city government shuts down within about 48 hours, the place would become uninhabitable, because, among other things, we provide drinking water, and if you don’t have that, you can’t live. So it doesn’t get more basic than that. And there’s a very perceptive op ed piece ran last couple days by the Mayor of Baltimore suggesting that if more of the people in Congress had had the experience of being in local government, or any executive experience, there might be less willingness to let things reach this point. I’m certainly a fan of mayors being being in Congress because, because there are people we can work with better and the same, I might add, for the state legislature, where I sometimes worry that mayors and cities are being treated like just another interest group, and we really count on the state to continue to have policies that benefit us. And would love to see more people with local government experience here I am talking about experience at my age, but, but I think it’d be a real benefit at every level. Richard Lugar 42:59 I’d just like to pick that up, because I think Pete’s on to something very important here, many of the members of Congress presently. We heard some terrible tales about the 19th century this morning, but let’s just talk about the current Congress. It came to these responsibilities not because they have been mayors or governors or attorney general or had had any particular responsibility, they are persons who have very strong views about various subjects, but they’ve come to Congress, and I can just say, from my own experience, in the last 10 years, we’ve not moved long before this year, very many appropriation bills, that is, the spending bills, have hardly ever passed a budget. This is not new. It may be one of the worst examples, and I would say in large part, is because the people involved do not have really legislative experience or experience really in dealing with other people. If you take the situation my way or the highway and you say, I’m a member of Congress, but I hate Washington. I don’t want to spend any more hours here than I have to three days a week. Is about it for me, because I want to be back on the hustings with the people. These are the people I’m interested in. Well, that’s fine, but in terms of actually physically doing the work, not so fine, because nobody is there. Or if the House decides that they haven’t last two years to take a whole week off every out of every forward, it’s arbitrarily so they can be back on the hustings and so forth. You finally get to a situation in which people, first of all, don’t know each other. They don’t ever see each other because they’re back on the hustings. They’re not so this, this has implications, for instance, in the Foreign Relations Committee, and we. I was deeply interested, or the Ag Committee with the Farm Bill, very, very difficult to move anything in either situation. And finally, I would just say that, frankly, that many people with whom I visited, say, in the last five years in Indiana, frequently, quite apart from the rest of the nations, I won’t categorize that I would go out to a town hall meeting or some other meeting, and they respectfully would say, Now, Dick, we appreciate work you’ve done in getting all those warheads that were aimed at us and taking care of the world and so forth, but we’re not interested that anymore. Let’s not talk about that. We’re interested in budgets and taxes, in jobs. That’s what we want to talk about. That’s all we want to talk about. Well, somebody still has to talk about the rest of the world occasionally, and it’s very difficult. People will criticize the president for lacking congressional support and so forth. But in fact, is if nobody is studying, nobody’s reading, speed it nobody is doing anything about this. We’re really talking about a federal government that may have some talented people, but they’re not prepared, really, for this particular thing. I think this may change over the course of time. I’m always optimistic. These are cycles we go through. Having heard about the other centuries today. Why it was even worse still, I suppose, on other occasions. But we’re in a very complicated world in which we have large responsibilities and we need people. I just make a final point, and that is that I used to worry as I went around Indiana. It’s not berate anybody who’s been serving in public office, but I would talk to people who are gifted, attorneys, doctors, civic leaders, and they would be prepared, really, to be a part of a committee that would raise money for my campaign or but not to put their own names on the ballot, not to put their own decks in the news, so that finally, after you eliminate several rafts of very talented people in this state, what is left finally on the ballot sometimes is not exactly what you would want. And so you ask if some of these people, okay, don’t make your whole life of it, but you know, maybe you might really run for the school board someday, or for the city council or something of that variety. Disagreeable as that may seem, you don’t have to make a lifetime of it, but at least put your own neck out there and but I don’t get many buyers for that, I hope that there will be many more. Audience Member 2 47:44 Hello. Just wanted to for you to think about this for a little bit and reply to it. We know we all went through the recession, and it’s not been a good thing, but yet we’re looking at a comeback of some sorts. And if you come right here to the state of Indiana, and look all around at the other states surrounding us, we seem like we’re number one. We’re number one in getting new business and taxes in budget and the fact that we’re not in debt over our head. Why do you think that we are shining so brightly, if indeed we are shining brightly? Pete Buttigieg 48:29 Well, certainly you’re appealing to my Indiana pride on one level. So I think there’s, you know, I think there’s a discipline that our state has had and that our government has had that’s been beneficial. I think it’s something we try to do at the local level too. We’re very proud that we have the best bond rating of any class two city in Indiana. It’s not the flashiest thing to talk about your bond rating, but, but it really matters for a lot of reasons. But let’s not lull ourselves, I think, into a sense of complacency. At the same time, we’re doing well by a lot of measures, of some fiscal measures, and also measures of how we’re regarded in the near term by business decision makers, but in the medium to long term, I think business decision makers will evaluate communities and states based on, certainly fiscal strength, but two other big things, education and infrastructure, and in those two respects, I’m not comfortable with where we are in Indiana, and, for that matter, not comfortable with where we are in South Bend, which is why we all got to work so hard to find more solutions. The good news is for somebody who’s passionate about the local level, especially as federal government creaks into dysfunction, we hope temporarily, a lot of the most interesting innovation when it comes to infrastructure and education can happen at the local level, but not without some level heads in Washington as well. Richard Lugar 50:00 I would just pick up the education part. Especially, many of the surveys now did not put Indiana at the top of the list with regard to the public school system, to matter of fact, way down the list. Likewise, with regard to the so called STEM skills, those are not the whole thing, and they’re big arguments as to whether mathematics and engineering are more important than philosophy and so forth. And I’ll get into that. Pete and I were philosophy types, but in any event, I think Ivy Tech, in its extension, is trying very hard. This is called bridge the gap between the jobs that are possible and available in very wonderful industries, and the lack of the skills of people, regardless of age, who are not really able to meet those and this is a big gap in Indiana. I think many are trying to address it, but we had no discussion this morning about the public school system. And from a sentimental standpoint, this is very important for me, because I remember so well all the struggles were involved in this, but this has not gone well. It’s not going well at all for the children who were involved, or their parents, or really, I think, for the heart of the city, and it’s something that really has to be addressed. Brandon 51:21 Think we got one more question. Over here. Audience Member 3 51:26 Hello. I know that there are many students here, along with myself, that are seeking careers in politics, and I just have a question for both of you. Are there certain aspects of human character, human character that one needs to possess to succeed in their field. Or do you have any advice to the students here in the audience? Richard Lugar 51:50 Well, I will start out with saying I heard, for instance, Mayor McBarnes this morning, he did not dwell on this, but he really pointed out the strength of his faith in God and the fact that he is guided by this. I think that is very important. I don’t want to go into a sermon today, but I would say that the fact is that I think someone who is going to be a successful public servant really has to start with prayer and asking what is expected of me, and how should I conduct myself, and how can I make a difference in this life, however many years I’m given, and that, I think, is pretty fundamental. Now, after that, you may come to the conclusion this is going to require a great deal of work on your part. It’s going to require that from the beginning, you were a good student, maybe a good boy scout, if you’re a male, a good person in terms of going to church services and taking part in Sunday school, and when Mike met his youth fellowship and all of this. And finally, of course, having the ability to learn new skills, to understand that the world moves on, whether you have or not, and that there are other people are going to require, really, that somebody study a little bit ahead of the situation if, in fact, the challenges are going to be met. These, these, I think, are very important aspects of people looking at public service. And I’m always excited visiting with the interns that we’ve had in the Senate office, and now this wonderful program that UND has created out of our lugar Center in Washington. The first year, we have 10 students from und. These are all students who would ask the same question you have asked, What do we do? How do you prepare for this? And we’re helping the preparation through matching up with other members of Congress in their offices, a gifted professor from Georgetown who comes in twice a week for extended lectures and a good number of tours that Connor Burns of my staff sitting next to you, takes around Washington with the students they Were out of Mount Vernon this week, for example, and it’s an attempt, however, to think aloud, as I do with the students each week for a couple of hours about where we all are headed and what it will take. Pete Buttigieg 54:35 What a deep question human character is. First of all, points to the importance of being a student. So for all the experiences I’ve had that prepared me to do what I do now, from campaigns to time in the business community to even military service, nothing was as important in my formation as the time, of course, that I spent as a student. So. So I hope it’s recognized among students, what an important moment you have on your hands right now, the only time in your life when it will be your full time job, or at least your primary job, to find out as much as you can about yourself and about the world that you operate in. That is incredible. It’s a it’s a great racket that that we’ve managed to organize through the university, which may be the greatest invention of mankind. We’ve managed to organize opportunities to do that, because then you will be able to formulate your purpose, which may or may not be formulated in terms of a job title you’d like to have. I tend to think of that as secondary, but purpose in the sense of what you aim to do, so that whatever job title you get, you know what to use it for. And that’s where character is so important. And that, by the way, and I’m not just pandering, is why humanities is so important, right? So I think the Senator and I both studied, when I did history and literature for my first degree, philosophy, politics and economics for my second just about the only thing I didn’t study with policy and how to be a mayor and any of that stuff, but, but, you know, you use the word character, which is a great word, tired word, because people use it and wear it out in some cliches, but it’s important, because there’s two kinds of challenges that any I Think leader winds up dealing with, and one is what you might call technical challenges. They’re, they’re problems that have a right answer. They’re they’re things that, if you could just figure out how to do something a little more efficiently, a little more cleverly, a little more quickly, a little more cheaply, you’ve made progress and and by the way, leaders who are exceptionally good at that, is one reason that Indianapolis and Indiana, more generally, has been in such good shape in the last half century, but that’s table stakes. It’s hard, don’t get me wrong, but that’s the beginning. The real tricky part is the challenge that comes to any leader to deal with decisions where there’s no amount of technical work is going to tell you the right answer, because there’s no technical right answer. You can’t solve the puzzle. It’s not math. The only thing you can do is make a choice between two alternatives that pit valid values against each other. Situations where you can make one person or group better off, but not without making another person or group worse off. And how you handle those how you handle those situations that put your values into conflict, is the very stuff of character, and you will have no better chance in your life to form and inform that character than the time you’re spending right now as students, hopefully reading novels in history and philosophy as well as whatever your chosen field of study might be. Ted Frantz 57:45 Much as we’d all like to stay here all day, at least, I know I would, we have reached the time where we need to depart, and I hope that you all will join us in the Schwitzer Center Atrium right around the corner for our special announcement involving the Mayoral Archives, which is really going to be exciting. And we’re glad to have Senator Lugar, Mayor Hudnut, Dave Frick, here to help with that. Thank you all. It’s been a very, very exciting day, exciting last night, great programming. We’re just thrilled that the inaugural Richard M. Fairbanks Symposium got off to such a great start. Thanks. From young gun mayors to historians to our deputy mayors and, of course, this just unforgettable conversation here that we just were fortunate to be a part of. Finally, also, thank you to Indiana Humanities, our partner in this incredible endeavor. Over the last two days, Kira staff went out of their way and the entire UIndy community, from students to people setting up lunch and having to do things at the last second. It was an incredible effort. Thank you all so very much, and we look forward to seeing you back here next year for our second Fairbanks symposium. Won’t you join us now around the corner and give one last round of applause? Please. This podcast was produced by the Institute for Civic Leadership and Mayoral Archives and the Department of Communication at the University of Indianapolis. It is made possible by the support of the Richard M. Fairbanks Foundation, Indiana humanities and the Lily Endowment. For more information, please see our website, uindy.edu/mayoral.

Transcript Narrator 0:00 From Richard Serra’s Tilted Arc in New York to Cleveland’s giant Free Stamp, public art can be a controversial and even divisive topic involving questions of style and esthetics, audience, relevancy, civic identity and democratic expression. Conversely, public art can create a climate of creativity, foster public advocacy, rehabilitate a city’s economic and cultural profile and establish positive relationships between artists, patrons and audiences. This is evident by successful pieces like Chicago’s Cloud Gate or the many iterations of Robert Indiana’s love sculpture at the Richard M Fairbanks symposium held at the University of Indianapolis on February 5, 2016 arts professionals and city leaders postulated that despite the potential criticism that could be lobbed at public art, there exists an inherent value in the beautiful and artistic that should be celebrated for its power to enrich and inspire. Angel Ysaguirre, Executive Director of the Illinois Humanities Council and former Deputy Commissioner for the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and special events, articulates this in the first session of the symposium, Angel Ysaguirre 1:09 One of the things that we never that we seem to be afraid to talk about when it comes to the arts, in terms of the value, is the intrinsic value of beauty. And I think it’s a mistake not to not to talk about that, but there’s a fair amount of research about the relationship between art and nature and happiness, and in the end, that’s the point of government, right to provide the kinds of tools that we need as a community to make individuals happy. But I wouldn’t discount the incredible importance of Beauty and the relationship between beauty and happiness. Narrator 1:46 Julia Moore of the Arts Council of Indianapolis likewise argues for the ability of public art to transform urban space into an artistic experience. She notes that one of the key moments of Indianapolis arts infusion strategy was to put art where people were anyway. Julia Moore 2:01 This happened in a number of places. The Indianapolis International Airport, the whole new airport in 2008 five years of design and planning and art was supposed to be part of the airport from the very beginning. Get art into places where people, ordinary, ordinarily go. So just simply walking through the airport, even getting a drink of water becomes an artistic experience, and this has resulted in our airport getting the title of North America’s Best Airport four out of the five past five years. Speaker 1 2:31 Scott Stulen and the curator of audience experience at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, Applied Arts ability to uplift to artistic experiences in general, explaining the art can and should be appealing to a full spectrum of audiences. Scott Stulen 2:44 Really, what we kind of think about in our departments, how fun doesn’t have to be frivolous and smart, doesn’t have to be boring, how we can have these things that are fun, accessible, but also very rooted in the arts, and kind of in art history and art education. So thinking about how we make things that are social, interactive and fun. Ted Frantz 3:04 This podcast was produced by the Institute for Civic Leadership and Mayoral Archives and the Department of Communication at the University of Indianapolis. It is made possible by the support of the Richard M. Fairbanks Foundation, Indiana Humanities, and the Lilly Endowment. For more information, please see our website, uindy.edu/mayoral.

Transcript Narrator 0:00 [Music] Speaking about his work as the Indianapolis Museum of Arts Curator of Audience Experience, Scott Stulen indicated that Indianapolis is on track to become a model city to which future civic leaders will look for inspiration. At the Richard M. Fairbanks Symposium held at the University of Indianapolis on February 5, 2016, Stulen told an audience of arts professionals and city leaders that he receives calls every week from people around the country wanting to know the formula that has made Indianapolis a thriving center of art and culture, what has made Indianapolis culturally successful, and how should the city continue to propel artistic innovation forward. Panelists and speakers throughout the Symposium touched on two key themes that define the Indianapolis model. The first is recognizing Indy’s unique assets and crafting city art strategies that celebrate and enhance that distinctiveness. The second is allowing the past to help shape the present. Director of Landmark Columbus, Richard McCoy speaks on how incorporating a city’s history can allow for present artistic inspiration that is modern and fresh yet connected to a culturally unique past. Richard McCoy 1:10 I think one of the things we need to do is to look back at our mission and to look back at who we were, to think about where we’re going. We spent a lot of money on what we did in the past. Let’s value it, and let’s consider it. Roland Hobart’s mural—hey, Roland—this is his mural from 1973. It was the winner of the first Urban Walls Competition. This was an effort by then Mayor Richard Lugar to make a new effort downtown. This is a mayor in Indianapolis who’s trying anything he can to get people to consider getting close to downtown, much less live in it the question we have today. And so this was an effort to create a project that had graphic designers and architects to make artworks of an architectural scale. To make artworks that weren’t necessarily even called public art at that time. But what they’re trying to do is to say, how do we revitalize a building? How do we revitalize this space? Let’s make it beautiful. The challenge here is, you’re only seeing half of Roland’s mural. So this mural lasted until the early 1980s on both sides of this wall, and then has since sort of fallen into a state of disrepair and damage. There’s a minor effort underway to have the mural repainted, but maybe we can talk about that another time. But so again, Indianapolis does pay attention to mission, does pay attention to what it’s thinking about. So this is a mural that was produced by big car. I hope I’m not stealing one of your slides, Jim. This is Jose De Gregorio and Aaron, Andy Fry’s mural that was produced across from the Hotel Alexander. This is public art working in the same way. This is a kind of graphic innovation intervention at an architectural scale. So to me, this is so interesting to see a mission carried forward, an idea carried forward, and it’s still working in a way for urban renewal. Speaker 1 2:53 Julia Moore of the Arts Council of Indianapolis follows up on McCoy’s comments by giving two examples of how both recognizing indies assets and considering the past when planning the present, have helped build Indy’s arts climate and enhance the city’s reputation. Julia Moore 3:07 So for the Super Bowl 46 in 2012 the Arts Council of Indianapolis created 46 new murals for around Indianapolis. It was a huge project. Spent nearly half a million dollars, both private and city funds, mostly private, and some of the murals instantly became icons of the city, like the Kurt Vonnegut mural. Who hasn’t seen that and who doesn’t associate that with Indianapolis? Very, very important. We also had another music, another mural of Indiana jazz musicians by Pamela Bliss. This one, Eduardo Mendieta had a mural on Mass Ave that’s now become a local icon. If you go down on, if you’re coming out of the Virginia Street garage trying to take a right turn on Delaware, you see this wonderful mural of a city facade being unrolled. That’s by Michael Cooper. So all of these have become icons of the city, and it was because of a sporting event. And this is a lasting legacy. It’s huge there. It immediately made neighborhoods more vibrant. Kicked off a lot of interest in having more murals all over town, and the quality instantly raised the bar on what murals could be. Murals that always had kind of like a, yeah, you put a mural in a neighborhood and it makes people happy, and then, you know, blah, blah, blah. But the idea that a mural could actually be a real artwork was really brought back into Indianapolis, where it hadn’t been a focus for a very long time. So, and now, all of a sudden, we had a murals program, and people still talk, oh, Indianapolis, yeah, I know your murals program. We don’t have a formal murals program. We really don’t, but people think we do, which I think is really great. The second idea is, we don’t do a very good job of promoting our arts, so what we need to do is point to the arts. Literally point, “arts are there.” So developed an idea to actually say, “hey, something arts is going on here,” and that’s where the big red arrow comes in. So it was a physical sculpture. Actually, there were two, one in wood and one in steel. It was carried around town, shipped on a trailer and then dropped at each of these events. It appeared in 47 locations total. And if you saw the arrow, you knew that something exciting was going on there. There were, you know, campaigns, where’s the arrow now? There were, you know, monthly postcards that went out to just say, you know, this is everything that’s coming out. It was a huge media impact. The arts organizations and venues enjoyed unbelievable boosts and reputation. Memberships rose, attendances increased, and new partnerships were formed between organizations that still last to this day. So the idea of working together to call attention to this vibrancy, you know, Kira had said, we don’t make a good idea. We don’t blow our horns a lot. Well, we blew our horn in 2005 and I think it really, really changed the city about how we view the arts in Indianapolis, Narrator 5:57 Indianapolis has generally been successful with its arts initiatives, although city and cultural development does not come without a few roadblocks. In a conversation with Dave Lawrence, CEO of Indy’s Arts Council, former Vice President of the IndianapolisCity/County Council, John Barth discussed his hopes that a version of his vetoed percent for arts proposal will eventually be passed by the city. Lawrence and Barth agree that the success of this initiative in the future hinges on learning from what was done in the past, and on focusing on what is unique about Indianapolis, which, in Barth’s opinion, is its neighborhoods. John Barth 6:33 Something that I was hoping would happen as an outcome of the Percent for Art, for neighborhoods, passing was that, and having it focused on neighborhoods is that I don’t think we do enough in Indianapolis to make sure that our neighborhoods are distinct and really clear. There’s so much history in so many neighborhoods, but they haven’t had the branding or the connection to their path that I think would be great for the future of the city to understand where we came from, and there’s so much cultural history with folks coming here from around the world and founding businesses, creating neighborhoods, creating churches, really, if the folks now want as a component of their funding through this program to say, “Oh, we want to recognize the cultural history of our neighborhood” and help that be define who they are now. I think that would be so neat. I mean, my own family coming here from Ireland, opening a factory at 16th and Sherman. I mean, there’s many stories like that where there are Irish neighborhoods and in German neighborhoods where that is a defining thing, and there’s names on the streets that people don’t realize that name is because this guy came came, you know, from Hamburg or whatever. That’s important. So I’d love to see this pass be signed in that kind of deep sort of connection to the past, or blossom from it. Narrator 7:45 In the weeks following the Fairbanks symposium, Mayor Joe Hogsett signed new Percent for Art legislation into law, thus fulfilling the dreams of many public arts advocates and starting a new chapter in the history of public art in Indianapolis. Ted Frantz 8:00 This podcast was produced by the Institute for Civic Leadership and Mayoral Archives and the Department of Communication at the University of Indianapolis. It is made possible by the support of the Richard M Fairbanks Foundation, Indiana Humanities, and the Lily Endowment. For more information, please see our website, uindy.edu/mayoral.

Transcript Narrator 0:04 Indianapolis Mayor Stephen Goldsmith identified neighborhood revitalization, anti violence and overall quality of life as key priorities of his administration. While Mayor Goldsmith’s efforts to reach these goals emphasized privatization of city services and fiscal responsibility, he also continued to play the role of arts advocate initiated by his predecessors Richard Lugar and William Hudnut as a way to build communities and improve the city. Yet maintaining an active arts strategy as part of city policy can prove challenging for civic leaders when social problems such as poverty, crime rates or government budgets loom larger in the public mind than seemingly superfluous activities like public school arts or music programs. At the Richard M Fairbanks Symposium held at the University of Indianapolis on February 5, 2016, arts professionals and city leaders discussed how the arts, if prioritized over the long term, can actually provide unique and creative solutions to significant social problems. Vice President of Civic Investment for the Health and Hospital Corporation, Michael Kaufman, begins the conversation by Angel Ysaguirre, Executive Director of the Illinois Humanities Council, how support for the arts can be garnered in the face of pressing community problems. Michael Kaufman 1:16 I want to reference the mayoral address that our incoming Mayor Joe hogsett gave earlier this year, at the very start of the year, and where he cited crime, poverty and a significant city deficit in the budget as our primary issues that we’re facing going into this new year and into his administration. We have a $50 million structural deficit. We have one in three children in Marion County born into poverty. We have one in four children who are food insecure. So while I and I’m sure many others here believe in the moral imperative arts and the amazing ability for arts and culture to transform and impact change, how do we defend, or how do we argue or support or get behind the support for arts and culture as a city? Angel Ysaguirre 2:07 So, you know, in a way, the arts is a long game, and the issues that you’re raising, I think we think of addressing those issues through like a shorter term fix. So with crime, right? We think about more police on the streets, right? That’s a very short term strategy, but there’s a lot of research, and I think a lot of really smart reasons to play the long game, which is what the arts are more about, in terms of community impact. I think about 15 or 16 years ago, researcher, a woman named Shirley Bryce Heath at Stanford University, finished up a 10-year longitudinal research of what kinds of interventions had the biggest impact on the academic performance of low income students of color. And about five years into this study, she realized that after school sports programs and after school arts programs by and far had the largest positive impact on young kids of color and their academic performance. So, you know, there are lots of things that we can talk about in terms of the economic impact of the arts, the ways in which it makes us more creative, smarter, better thinkers. But again, this is sort of the long game, right? We can’t say that it’s the same thing as buying a hungry person a meal or putting more police on the street, but in the long run, it’s probably a more effective, or certainly as equally effective, strategy for dealing with those issues 20 years from now. So they’re not as large of an issue as they are now. Speaker 1 3:59 Joanna Taft believes that art education is a vital step in creating world class citizens through exposure to and patronage of the arts. She reiterates the positive long term effects the arts can have with illustrative examples from her work as the director of the Harrison Center for the Arts, through which she has seen how arts in Indianapolis can provide cultural solutions to community challenges. Joanna Taft 4:20 The Harrison Center started here in high school because my artists started coming to me and saying, I need to move to New York, LA and Chicago. And by the way, I didn’t know that. Would the speaker say today that jobs are hard to get in Chicago. It’s hard to keep artists in Chicago. My artists didn’t know that they wanted to go to Chicago, and so I didn’t know what to do, but I knew I needed them there at the Harrison said I needed them in Indianapolis and and so, you know, I was thinking about, what do I do? And at the same time, Mayor Peterson was talking about needing world class citizens, and Brian Payne was talking about needing a creative class. And at that point, IPS’s graduation rate for African American males is 19%. This is long before you came. Yeah, and, and so, you know, I needed art patrons. So what could we do to to solve that problem? And so that was when Harris School of Art and Design had announced that it was moving to the IUPUI campus. And so we proposed, what would happen if we started a school designed to grow art patrons, a high school designed to grow art patrons, and that would grow those world class resident, world class citizens that every city needs. And so that was kind of how we started here in high school. And what’s happened today that schools crafted to grow art patrons, and now we have we’re in the top 1% of public schools nationwide, and these kids are not only graduating and coming to buy art from me, but they’re actually buying art before they graduate, which I never imagined would happen. Narrator 4:20 Taft continues by describing the Harrison Center’s cultural entrepreneur initiative, which demonstrates how the arts can provide leadership and creative problem solving experiences for youth and young adults while simultaneously meeting a community’s needs. Joanna Taft 4:50 And a cultural entrepreneur is someone who sees a need, takes a risk, leverages resources, invests energy and networks to build culture in the city. And so, we we’ve had over 125 students go through this program, either high school or college kids. I’ll give one other example. One intern came to me and asked for $372 to build giant puppets as a cultural entrepreneur. And I said, Okay, a cultural entrepreneur sees a need, takes a risk, leverages resources, invests energy, networks, build culture in the city. What need are you addressing? Why are you building these giant puppets? And he said, Indianapolis needs a spectacle of wonder. And that got me, that really got me. And so he built these puppets, and they took them down to the circle, and I need to tell Jim Walker this, so I can borrow them for Spark this summer. But an he, and he set these puppets up and people just streamed out of their office buildings. And, you know, the media came and we got it was so much fun to get the free media coverage. But the best thing that happened was it made people really happy that they lived in Indianapolis. And so these cultural entrepreneur interns are looking for different ways that they can help our city grow. And so when they they graduate from our program, they stay in our city, and they’re looking for ways to see a need, take a risk, leverage resources, invest energy and network to build culture in our city, and they become art patrons. Ted Frantz 7:19 This podcast was produced by the Institute for Civic Leadership and Mayoral Archives and the Department of Communication at the University of Indianapolis. It is made possible by the support of the Richard M Fairbanks Foundation, Indiana Humanities, and the Lily Endowment. For more information, please see our website, uindy.edu/mayoral.

Transcript Narrator 0:00 In 1977 Mayor William Hudnut hosted an awards ceremony to honor outstanding contributions to the development of culture and the arts in Indianapolis. In his opening address, he credited the momentum of Indy’s arts movement with shaping the city into a unique cultural destination. Yet he reminded the audience that while select individuals and organizations would be given formal recognition that evening Indy’s rapidly improving cultural image was, in his own words, the result of the efforts of 1000s of our citizens, creative artists, arts and cultural institutions, volunteers and businesses. At the Richard M. Fairbanks Symposium held at the University of Indianapolis on February 5, 2016, arts professionals and city leaders discussed how our city must continue these cooperative efforts by seeking connection, communication and integration through supportive partnerships and innovative arts strategies in order to further develop Indy’s identity as a cultural leader. Angel Ysaguirre, former Deputy Commissioner for the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events, started off the conversation by detailing some successful points of Chicago’s cultural plan, which included a focus on music, film, culinary arts and continuous communication between artists, arts organizations the city and the general public. Angel Ysaguirre 1:19 In terms of the cultural plan, so the cultural planning process in Chicago was really fantastic. We held about 200 community conversations across the city, in wealthy neighborhoods, poor neighborhoods, to ask residents of Chicago what was most important to them in terms of in terms of the arts, and it was based on their suggestions that the city came up with its plan for how to engage with the with the city with a small c in terms of the arts. And it was actually through the cultural planning process that we learned that the number one reason besides business that people come to Chicago is architecture. We somehow never knew that, but we also learned about how many artists in Chicago live there because of the music scene, because of the film scene, and because of the culinary scene, up until that point, we never thought of culinary as an art form that the city was going to get behind. And so we learned these important things through the cultural planning process. Narrator 2:35 Just as Ysaguirre attributes the successful crafting of Chicago’s cultural strategy to positive relationships between the city and the community, Scott Stulen of the Indianapolis Museum of Art speaks on the value of maintaining connections and effective communication between institutions, cities and individuals. Stulen discusses the Museum’s public programming, which centers on the goal of launching relationships and conversations between arts institutions and the community through the medium of accessible, innovative and relevant public art experiences. Scott Stulen 3:05 We were lucky to have support from the Efroymson Family Fund to start ARTx, which is our research and development division the Museum, where we’re trying to figure out a bunch of these things about what the Museum needs to change to be relevant in the decades ahead. Because if we don’t change, and we’re not bringing more young audiences and really changing how we work, and being part of this conversation of people talking about 30 years from now, we’re gone. It really is that important to figure out how to adapt to this. So here’s some of the ways that we’re kind of doing that. And it’s thinking about again, like how we bring in, I think, younger audiences, and I will say, for like, our median age the museum younger audiences means under 50. But really thinking about how, and that’s there’s a sad truth to some of that. But really thinking about how we engage people a little bit differently. And some of it is when I came in as really simple little things, which can be prompts. It can be things like putting a hammock on the Art and Nature Park, putting a musician into the gallery that just indicates something is different happening here, or this is a place that you can stop and pause and do something more than just moving through and looking at work of art. That, of course, is part of the experience too, but that we could use it for other things. We started family days, finding ways we could bring in those audiences. And I think the key part of this is thinking about how those family days can part with local arts organizations and be relevant to our neighbors and our community reflect more of what’s around us. Narrator 4:29 Harrison Center for the Arts Executive Director Joanna Taft, likewise ties connection, communication and integration together with her organization’s examples of how artists and arts institutions directly contribute to the positive development of communities and city identity. Joanna Taft 4:44 There’s been a creative placement making movement in our city and across the country, and the Harrison Center has been part, was part of the beginning of that movement here, and this is where we’ve seen the power of the arts and artists to make a difference in community development. And so it’s been that was kind of what gave us permission to take art outside the four walls of our gallery and actually put it into get engaged in public art and billboard art and that type of thing. So we did the Billboard at 16th and Delaware, and people just loved the billboard. And once that went up, it helped our patron base, because people would drive fast up Delaware, and never noticed that we were there. And they’d see that art, and they’d try to figure out, what is the City Gallery and why did they put this billboard art up? And then they started coming in and asking questions and buying art. In addition, we did actually Stefan Eicher here, he did these holiday windows for us. If anybody saw we have 24 windows that wrap around mostly the basement of the Harrison Center. And if you walk along 16th Street, generally that side of our building is dead. And that’s not what an arts organization should be. We should never feel dead. And so Stefan enlisted 23 artists, I think the numbers right to do 24 windows and and they were like little Macy’s windows. You know, with one had live kittens. How about that? Live kittens. You could actually adopt a cat from the…a feral cat. So anyway, you under promise and you over deliver. That’s, that’s what I do. And then we went on to do murals and sculpture, and we did a sound, actually sculpture and sound with Quincy Owens, who’s right here, and getting ready to finish, to do a light project with with Sean and mark. And so creative place making has helped us develop our art patrons as well, because we’ve taken art to the people, the people that haven’t come in. We’ve taken art to them, and they’ve fallen in love with it. So that’s kind of like my my quick examples, I will say that what I’ve learned is the more that we’ve connect, the more that we have integrated, the more we felt connected, and the stronger we become as a community. Ted Frantz 6:58 This podcast was produced by the Institute for Civic Leadership and Mayoral Archives and the Department of Communication at the University of Indianapolis. It is made possible by the support of the Richard M. Fairbanks Foundation, Indiana Humanities, and the Lily Endowment. For more information, please see our website, uindy.edu/mayoral.

Transcript Narrator 0:00 The patterns of urban geography in America began shifting in the 1960s with the decline of American manufacturing and the economic downturn that followed in what has become known as the urban crisis, cities across the nation reacted to a number of economic and demographic trends, de industrialization, which included deteriorating city centers, middle class, flight to suburban peripheries, high unemployment and financial cutbacks were just a few of the problems with which city leaders contended. In this climate, cities adapted by generating strategies for government reform and Community Renewal in order to market their cities, improve their workforces and foster economic development in Indianapolis, a primary component of the city’s urban renewal strategy was a commitment to sports and arts as economic stimulants. Although Indianapolis became widely known for sports, city support of public art helped initiate a cultural rebirth from the late 60s forward at the Richard M. Fairbanks symposium held at the University of Indianapolis on February 5, 2016, arts professionals and city leaders discuss the use of arts as revitalization and development tool, highlighting the history of one of Indy’s most popular cultural neighborhoods. Mark Rushman, Chief Fine Arts Curator at the Indiana State Museum, elaborates on how the arts can make a city economically competitive and creatively vibrant. Mark Rushman 1:23 Most of you know of Massachusetts Avenue as a place with upscale restaurants, theaters, some galleries, a really cool and hit place to be. But Massachusetts Avenue was not always that way. It in 1984 this is what Massachusetts Avenue looked like, very different than it is today. In fact, most of Mass Avenue was boarded up buildings, the Sears building was vacant. Just down the street from this, there were some things going on in the 300 block. Stout shoes was in the 300 block. But as you move further north, it was either underused buildings, vacant buildings, and areas that you just really wouldn’t want to be in. And you wonder, like, how did we actually get to this point? How did we go from a stuccoed up building nobody’s using, nobody’s around to an area today that’s vibrant and inviting and everybody likes to go to. And for that, I credit two pioneers here in Indianapolis. The name is, one of the names is Scott Keller, who is a real estate developer who had a passion for historic properties. And the other person is Bob Beckman Jr., who was a realtor for FC Tucker and also very involved with the arts community here in Indianapolis, involved with the arts council, one of the founding members. He was also involved with WFYI and a number of other organizations. So these two gentlemen actually were the reason, in my opinion, why Massachusetts Avenue made the turn and became what it is today. But their plan really was to go out and recruit galleries such as Rushman Gallery to come into the area to help stabilize it and help turn it around, making it a vibrant place for people to come and visit. And with that, I signed on, Patrick King Gallery signed on, 431 Gallery, which was affiliated with Heron School of Art by former Heron students, Precious Design Studio, and then the Cunningham Gallery in the 300. And it was really the the galleries that went in first, before anybody else was around. As I said, I used to stare out my my door at that white stucco building. And it was the galleries, the arts, some of the performing arts venues, that moved into the area, and they helped stabilize it. They helped bring people back down. We would have Friday night openings, and we would have hundreds, sometimes 1000s of people come out. Now, keep in mind, this is in an area that most people weren’t walking around, you know, they didn’t feel comfortable being there, but somehow, through the arts, that that made it acceptable, whether it was a sense of danger or whether it was a sense of of of just, you know, being in the hip place and being on the cutting edge, but it was really through the vision of both Scott and Bob that they planted that seed that this could be a vibrant and an important place for the arts to thrive. Narrator 4:11 Julia Moore of the Arts Council of Indianapolis further discusses how the artistic development of urban spaces and neighborhoods improves overall quality of life and enhances a city’s profile. Julia Moore 4:22 As a public art administrator, my perspective means that most of the time I think about ideas that get the arts out in front of people where they’d never expect to see them. And the ideas that I’m going to talk about today are some ideas that share one commonality. They’re about infusing events and places with art, even if they are not artists related. And so this is the biggest idea. The overarching idea is that a thriving city knows that the arts should automatically be a part of everyday life for the people that live in it. Narrator 4:53 Moore identifies one key idea, which she calls the Blitz that helped shape Indianapolis into a cultural destination. And boosted the city’s reputation. Julia Moore 5:01 So the first idea I’m going to talk about is I’m going to call it the Blitz. And I’m going to call it the Blitz because it has to do with sports. And the idea was to include the arts whenever we host a major sporting event, is to also host art as part of it. And we did this very, very early in our quest to develop the city as the amateur sports capital of the US. And this was during the Pan American art Pan Am Games, which Indianapolis hosted in August 1987 the city, at the same time, said we’re going to also host a Pan American Arts Festival all over town. So over 60 arts and cultural organizations participated. Cumulatively, they spent about $4 million. Four million dollars on programs, events, performances. There were over 1000 opportunities for people in the city to experience the arts. And the idea was to learn about the arts and the heritage of all these different countries that were visiting to participate in the games. And that was the idea of hosting the Games in the first place to learn a little bit more about the world, right? So you had local artists participating. There was a 300 voice choir. There was 1000 member marching band. The Indiana State Museum had an exhibition of Canadian art glass. The children’s museum had an exhibition about Mayan history and culture and the IMA and I got a couple an image there had a major exhibition of Latin American contemporary art. I mean, absolutely amazing. I went to see it, and I was totally blown away. It was the first time that such a large presentation had been done in over 20 years. So it was about time it got a lot of publicity, got a lot of critical acclaim, and since it was a traveling exhibition, it did a lot to raise the profile of Indianapolis for high quality and thoughtful contributions to the arts. So it was a kind of a morale and brand booster for the city as well. And that attention and saying, hey, you know what? Indianapolis has got something going in the arts here. It really forced the city to up the cultural game every single time. Ted Frantz 7:09 This podcast was produced by the Institute for Civic Leadership and Mayoral Archives and the Department of Communication at the University of Indianapolis. It is made possible by the support of the Richard M. Fairbanks Foundation, Indiana Humanities, and the Lily Endowment. For more information, please see our website, uindy.edu/mayoral.

Transcript Narrator 0:00 In an interview with the Washington Post in 2000 former Indianapolis mayor, William Hudnut was asked about the relevancy of education in determining a political leader’s potential for success. He responded, there’s more to school than book learning. Your education is what you remember after you have forgotten what you were taught in a panelist discussion at the Richard M. Fairbanks symposium held in downtown Indianapolis on April 1, 2015, civic leaders highlighted this expansive definition of education while relating how their experiences as students and young professionals helped direct them toward positions of leadership in their communities. Though each reflected on a different aspect of their personal development, they agreed that the best preparation for leadership roles comes through optimizing education, volunteer and work opportunities. In speaking about his liberal arts education, Mayor Greg Ballard explains how diligent study and a natural curiosity have helped expand his thinking. Greg Ballard 1:03 Understanding history and its impact on people has always been curious to be in how people react and how people, frankly—and I still it’s very difficult to me to to overestimate the importance—how many people make decisions at critical times. And I read a lot of biographies, and I still read a lot of leadership books. Those, and if you…I think all of us have been very fortunate to have people who we looked at and said, I kind of like that style. I kind of like that. I like the way he did that. I like the way he did that. I like the way she’s moving around here. I like, I like all this stuff. How does she think like that? I mean, we’ve all been blessed to be around those sorts of people, right? So, so I think it’s a mix of it all. Narrator 1:56 Mark Miles, CEO of Hulman & Company, and a key organizer of the 1987 Pan Am Games and the 2012 Super Bowl credits his involvement in political campaigning during his college years as the most influential experience in his development as a leader. Mark Miles 2:11 And the thing that helped me most, if I had any help in sort of leadership development, was that even while I was in college, I stayed out of here and got involved in the political campaign. And I’m not trying to run an ad for getting involved in politics necessarily, but it was a chance to see highly energized people, for the most part, very talented people, and if you stayed in it a little while, to have leadership responsibilities way beyond what was appropriate [audience laughter]. So frankly, for me, personally, more than my education at Wabash and liberal arts, which I cherish after the fact, [audience laughs] looking back, it was that that was sort of formative for me to see all these talented people. And again, you know, R, D or whatever, there’s just so few things, sports events in this community have been like that, that are just totally energizing. You learn to work your tail off. You learn to work with people, to bring people together, maybe to persuade a little bit. So it was, it was helpful to me. Narrator 3:26 President of Indiana Sports Corp, Ryan Vaughn says that his shift towards civic involvement came about as a result of his experiences during his early years of professional practice following his graduation. Ryan Vaughn 3:37 I probably didn’t appreciate, like Mark—maybe it’s a coincidence we both went to Wabash—the value of my education while I was getting it certainly. I mean, candidly, I went to school because I wanted to become the world’s greatest civil litigator. I wanted to walk into courtrooms and pound on tables and get into negotiations and you know, fly my private jets and drive my Mercedes. And I went to law school, because you had to go to law school and be a lawyer [audience laughter], and I started in the prosecutor’s office. I interned there, and I interned there and fell in love with the work. I mean, and it was very reaffirming to me. It’s what I wanted to be. I wanted to be a litigator. And I was litigated in the criminal, criminal justice world. When I graduated and passed the bar, I practiced as a prosecutor for almost four and a half years. And I got to the point of my career where I had done the same, literally, the same robbery of the same village pantry three times. [audience laughter] And I thought it’s, you know, I’m getting point of diminishing return here. I probably need to go into private practice, and now’s the time to transition and start to fulfill that goal. And I went into private practice, and six months into it, I just wanted to eat a bullet. So. I mean… Ted Frantz 5:01 Go to Village Pantry. [audience laughter] Ryan Vaughn 5:06 I mean, I went from hair on fire handling 95 major felony cases, putting murderers in prison, to working on one construction litigation case for 10 hours a day for six months. And the substance of the work was difficult, but after I had an honest conversation with myself, after chasing this dream for so long, what I what I realized was what I hadn’t realized when I was a prosecutor. And that is the great emotional reward that comes from improving your community. I missed showing up, putting on the white hat and saying, Ryan Vaughn, I’m here the assistance of Indianapolis to put that scumbag in jail. And that was the moment for me where I knew that I wasn’t going to be a rich civil litigator, that I had to have some sort of community-oriented mission. My education was helpful, but it was my personal experiences that drew drove me back to giving back to the community, because it just, it’s selfish, frankly, it just makes me happy. And that’s those are the opportunities I’ve chased, working for the mayor, serving on the council, and with this opportunity sports work. It’s really about, candidly, just fulfilling my own need to be happy in the service of others, and that’s what’s most important to me. Ted Frantz 6:31 This podcast was produced by the Institute for Civic Leadership and Mayoral Archives and the Department of Communication at the University of Indianapolis. It is made possible by the support of the Richard M. Fairbanks Foundation, Indiana Humanities and the Lily Endowment. For more information, please see our website, uindy.edu/mayoral.

Transcript Speaker 1 0:05 Utilizing an effective sports strategy as an economic stimulant has allowed Indianapolis to build a reputation as the amateur sports capital of the world. Despite beginning with a lack of sports assets and an inadequate urban infrastructure, city leaders since the 1960s have consistently committed to creative ideas for revitalization, and Indy has reaped the benefits of those strategies in the years since. At the Richard M. Fairbanks Aymposium held in downtown Indianapolis on April 1, 2015, civic leaders highlighted how implementing a sports strategy improves a city beyond the generation of revenue from sporting event business boosts and tickets sold. Alongside the economic value, these leaders agreed that a sports strategy offers improved community relations and better branding for a city, both of which positively affect quality of life within the city and reputation outside of it. Mark Miles, CEO of Hulman & Company, and a key organizer of the 1987 Pan Am Games and the 2012 Super Bowl, begins the discussion by explaining the relationship between sports and city branding. Mark Miles 1:12 For us, I’ve always thought at one level, it was primarily a talent strategy to make us a place that young people wanted to live and stay in, and related that as a branding strategy, because when we when we extend our profile normally beyond Indiana, we’re better known, and we can be conveyed normally in a very attractive light. I think the fact that our strategy from the very early days was in large part about having being a leader in this industry, of bringing events here, means we’re importing other people’s money while we’re pursuing talent and we’re pursuing branding. And the tourism, if you want to call it, that impact continues, normally, to be enormous. Greg Ballard 2:00 Mick Cornett builds upon the sports strategy branding connection by relating his experience as mayor in Oklahoma City, specifically addressing the benefits of acquiring major league teams. Mick Cornett 2:10 As far as having the major, the Major League component, I…you know, if you’re a major league city, you would have either, you know, one sports franchise all the way up to I guess New York City would have eight. I can assure you, whether you have two or three or four is it’s not irrelevant, but close to irrelevant. But going from zero to one is a massive step forward, because to a certain extent, and on a superficial level, you’ve become culturally relevant to a great deal of the general public. That’s a very important dynamic, because it’s again, on a superficial level, your peer cities are who your sports teams play. And the moment we got a major league team, and suddenly we’re playing teams from Indianapolis and Chicago and New York and LA, and suddenly there’s this level of quality that we, you know, may not deserve, but we’ve got. And that’s significant, and especially back to that quality of life component in a in a in a world that is constantly more about social media and video and ESPN and MTV, having that, that major league sports plan, that that that equivalent, is very important. And I think the fact that that we have, we ensured the NBA that the team had to be Oklahoma City and not Oklahoma, you know, for that very reason, we’d been branded by tragedy, and we were going to use the sports team to improve our brand. Narrator 3:42 Mayor Greg Ballard adds that effective city branding involves incorporating more than individual sporting events into a sports strategy. He argues that Indy’s brand has been successful because sports have served as a catalyst for developing community relationships and creating a sense of pride and unity among Hoosiers. Mick Cornett 4:00 As far as having the major, the Major League component, I…you know, if you’re a major league city, you would have either, you know, one sports franchise all the way up to I guess New York City would have eight. I can assure you, whether you have two or three or four is it’s not irrelevant, but close to irrelevant. But going from zero to one is a massive step forward, because to a certain extent, and on a superficial level, you’ve become culturally relevant to a great deal of the general public. That’s a very important dynamic, because it’s again, on a superficial level, your peer cities are who your sports teams play. And the moment we got a major league team, and suddenly we’re playing teams from Indianapolis and Chicago and New York and LA, and suddenly there’s this level of quality that we, you know, may not deserve, but we’ve got. And that’s significant, and especially back to that quality of life component in a in a in a world that is constantly more about social media and video and ESPN and MTV, having that, that major league sports plan, that that that equivalent, is very important. And I think the fact that that we have, we ensured the NBA that the team had to be Oklahoma City and not Oklahoma, you know, for that very reason, we’d been branded by tragedy, and we were going to use the sports team to improve our brand. Greg Ballard 5:32 Part of the sports management, part of the sports strategy for Indianapolis has always been about doing more than the game, more than the events. And that’s a big part of sports in Indianapolis, and it should be a big part of sports everywhere else. I think the Super Bowl was just the biggest thing that everybody saw because we planted all the trees, and we did the baskets with Tony Dungy, and we do breast cancer, and we did all these other things, and we’re doing it now with the Final Four. There are other activities throughout the community. That’s a huge part of what we do. And I think one of the things I want your students to really understand, sports on so many levels brings people together. It just brings people together. Business will be spawned off of that by itself. But community relations, people feeling good about their city, about their area, is very difficult to quantify, but it’s real. It is real. All you had to do was walk with me down Georgia Street during Super Bowl week to feel that because after Wednesday, or I think honey, after Wednesday, I couldn’t walk on Georgia street anymore. Not because it was crowded, because you still could have walked, but because so many people wanted to take a picture, and I just was trying to get up to Dunkin Donuts to get a coffee [audience laughter] and an hour later, I was halfway there. Unknown Speaker 7:07 You were going for the donuts. [audience laughter] Greg Ballard 7:14 But and I people were telling me out there was they, you know, you understand, I’m a Marine. I grew up here. I’d left for 23 years, came back on leave, and I saw the city a certain way, but it was clear to me during Super Bowl week that not everybody saw the city how I saw the city, but they started to after that. I don’t know how many people came up to me says, I never saw my city like this. I never thought we could do anything like this. I had dozens upon dozens of those sorts of comments. I always thought we could do that. I always thought that’s who we were, but not everybody else did. And I want to make sure that all the students understand sports brings people together. Ted Frantz 7:57 This podcast was produced by the Institute for Civic Leadership and Mayoral Archives and the Department of Communication at the University of Indianapolis. It is made possible by the support of the Richard M. Fairbanks Foundation, Indiana Humanities and the Lily Endowment. For more information, please see our website, uindy.edu/mayoral.

Transcript Narrator 0:00 City leaders in Indianapolis have been on a mission for decades to revitalize the city’s economy and image and to improve quality of life for Hoosiers. A significant acknowledgement that all the strategizing, planning and marketing have delivered tremendous results came in 2012 when Indianapolis served as the host city for Super Bowl 46. In typical Indianapolis style, the event became about more than the game. It became an opportunity to bolster Indy’s community and increase its brand value in the eyes of the nation. Dianna Boyce of the Indianapolis Super Bowl host committee commented on the policy behind the events organization, saying we let our actions speak louder than our words. Some of these actions included channeling Super Bowl revenue toward helping Indy’s homeless into local shelters, installing a food co-op in a neighborhood without grocery stores, and building a 20,000 square foot Youth Center to provide educational and health programming for Indy’s families. This model of event planning was discussed by civic leaders at the Richard M. Fairbanks symposium in downtown Indianapolis on April 1, 2015. In response to a question about large scale funding projects like the Super Bowl, panelists explained that the most successful city fundraising occurs when leaders focus on improving community and brand value. Mark Miles, CEO of Hulman & Company, and a key organizer of the 1987 Pan Am Games and the 2012 Super Bowl, begins by crediting Indy’s dedicated volunteers who demonstrate Hoosiers commitment to community building. Mark Miles 1:37 To me, the reason to do it wasn’t just the immediate improvement of the community in this crazy way. I believe that when when people get together and get involved in something bigger than themselves, they get really motivated. They get completely connected to the place in the city. We always say, you know, they figured out how to get off the couch and get involved civically, and I don’t care whether that’s about their scout troop, or the next major sporting event, or something very personal, or something with their school. The city is made up of people who are activists because they share a sense of community. Narrator 2:14 Ryan Vaughn, president of Indiana Sports Corp, describes how to weigh the value of investing in sports within the competitive global market by considering both the benefits sports pose for a community and a city’s branding strategy. Ryan Vaughn 2:26 There is an increasingly competitive environment for premier sporting events across the globe because people have recognized how economically valuable they are, not only in direct tax dollars, in indirect business cultivation and promotion and development, but in brand identity and what it means. There’s no funding solution that is going to be uniformly applicable to every city. The best way to address this, and it’s a legitimate public conversation, is, at what point is public investment not worth the public return? You know, how much does you have to spend to get an event, and are you losing money? And you have to make that economic decision based on the actual dollars and the very intangible, difficult to measure, brand and community value. I mean brand, global brand, but also what Mark’s talking about, what it means to your community to be able to rally around a bit like that. And that’s becoming more and more difficult metric to pan out. Narrator 3:32 Oklahoma City Mayor Mick Cornett explains that his fundraising efforts have met with greater success when he connects city funding to issues the community cares about. Mick Cornett 3:41 By now, I’ve been in the office a long time. I’ve run a lot of campaigns, either as a candidate myself or pushing an initiative, and I’m running for the NBA, and I’ve run them for sports arenas and all sorts of things. And well, I noticed a pattern. Inevitably in Oklahoma City at some point in the campaign, I find myself in some suburban neighborhood meeting, and I’m 10 miles from downtown, and I’m nose to nose with a guy who just is refusing to see things my way. And I reach a point where I realize this guy doesn’t like downtown, he doesn’t like taxes, and he doesn’t like me [audience laughter]. And when I’ve lost the intellectual argument with him, I close with this, I say, “Well, we’re creating a city where your kid and your grandkid are going to choose to live.” And they hate that argument [audience laughter] because they know it’s true. And that’s that’s kind of the real emotional aspect of passing an initiative. You’ve got it, you’ve got to approach people at the point where it’s what they care about, and they care about their kids and their grandkids, even though they don’t like paying taxes. Ted Frantz 4:57 This podcast was produced by the Institute for Civic Leadership and Mayoral Archives and the Department of Communication at the University of Indianapolis. It is made possible by the support of the Richard M. Fairbanks Foundation, Indiana Humanities and the Lily Endowment. For more information, please see our website, uindy.edu/mayoral.

Transcript Narrator 0:00 In response to the urban crisis that hit cities during the 1960s city leaders were forced to adapt to the shifting terrain by generating strategies for reform and community renewal in order to market their cities, improve their workforce and foster economic growth. Meeting these needs often required balancing revitalization goals between urban investment and suburb development. Referring to Indianapolis leaders focus on downtown regeneration in their efforts to achieve this balance, Mayor William Hudnut pointedly wrote, “You can’t be a suburb of nothing.” Narrator 0:38 Strategies employed by civic leaders to build thriving cities have ranged from providing corporate incentives to stimulate job creation to strategic cultural planning and leveraging amenities. At the Richard M. Fairbanks Symposium held in downtown Indianapolis on April 1, 2015, city leaders posited that truly successful cities are built by investing in quality of life, which ultimately creates an urban environment that attracts and keeps citizens, thereby stoking the economy and laying the foundation for a sustainable future. Mayor Greg Ballard starts the conversation by explaining how this strategy has been important in building Indianapolis economy and reputation. Greg Ballard 1:20 But we in Indianapolis have tried to build a city that people want to live in, and some people, believe it or not, still don’t get that. You have to build the city, because the talent out there today is completely mobile, and they they’re not going to they’re not moving to a job, they’re moving to where they want to live. And you have to create that kind of city where people want to live. Particularly in this time, probably the last 10 or 15 years, there was, there’s no question. There’s a trend across the country that people want to move into what I call authentic urban experiences. They’re moving back in. They want to live in the city. There are people who still are looking for the suburbs, and they’re looking for this and this, but there’s a huge movement to the city and millennials. They don’t want to own them. They don’t care about owning a car. They don’t care about owning a home. They want to live in the city and the city experience, and so you have to build it for them. They want to walk out the door and go to the museum and the game and the grocery store all right there, and if you can. So the urban core is important, and we’re building toward the urban core, clearly. But in neighborhoods like Fountain Square, Irvington, Broad Ripple and other places, you have to build kind of like a little village in there to have that place-making quality. And if you don’t have that place-making quality in the in the neighborhoods throughout the city, people aren’t going to move through those neighborhoods. Narrator 2:57 Oklahoma City Mayor Mick Cornett agrees that strategies focused on improving the quality of life in a city are far more effective and long lasting than investing in incentives. He describes how his city directly benefited by learning from Indy’s economic model, which enabled Oklahoma City to turn its deteriorating economy around. Mick Cornett 3:17 Like Indianapolis, we’ve had a string of effective mayors, and one of them learned some economic development lessons through a highly publicized loss to Indianapolis and and decided to invest in the quality of life and improve the community. And in a visit to Indianapolis that he made in like 1991, ’92 he describes it as he as he saw a city with a downtown that had some vitality. There were hotels, there were there were restaurants, there were sports arenas, there were people walking the streets. And he says, in Oklahoma City, at five o’clock you could shoot a cannon off in downtown, you weren’t going to hit anybody. We had one downtown hotel then, and it was struggling. And he came back and passed an initiative called MAPS: metropolitan area projects. And amongst the sporting requirements of that, he built a new triple A baseball stadium downtown, and he built the sports arena that would be built to the standards of the NBA and the NHL. Looking back, I’m not sure if Indianapolis had not built an arena without a team, if our civic leadership would have had the courage to build an arena without a team. And the reason that’s important is because two mayors later, I’m in the NBA and NHL offices trying to get us a team, not having any luck at all. Commissioner Stern called me the mayor who wouldn’t go away. [audience laughter]And all of a sudden, Hurricane Katrina hits New Orleans, and the Hornets don’t have a place to play, and because of the relationship I’d established in seeking the team, he allowed us. You know what it seemed like a one year trial to host an NBA team turned into. To that it turned into a relocated franchise. But you know, all of that, you know, kind of stems from having an arena that was open and a viable NBA arena with no tenant. And if we hadn’t had that, we wouldn’t have gotten, you know, the trial to see if we could host a team. So Indianapolis was a direct role model in the in the idea that you create a city where people want to live, we had been acting under the economic development model that if you put enough incentives on the table, we could buy corporate America’s affection, and that if we created jobs, people would move to our city because there were jobs there. But we didn’t realize and we saw that Indianapolis had seen the paradigm shift was that people were living where they wanted to live, and the jobs were going to where the people were,and that changed everything for Oklahoma City. Ted Frantz 5:53 This podcast was produced by the Institute for Civic Leadership and Mayoral Archives and the Department of Communication at the University of Indianapolis. It is made possible by the support of the Richard M. Fairbanks Foundation, Indiana humanities and the Lily Endowment. For more information, please see our website, uindy.edu/mayoral.

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