This fall, Brown County Schools students have attended a performance and master class taught by an Indiana University Jacobs School of Music director, and a performance and discussion with IU theater students about professional opportunities in acting.
Both happened right here in Brown County through a new partnership with the IU Center for Rural Engagement.
The center was just established in March in Bloomington through a $10 million Lilly grant. Its overall purpose is to “improve Hoosier lives and rural communities.”
It’s already involved in a wide variety of such projects, from health-related ones such as studying the stigma of mental health and addictions, investigating technology that can help older adults live independently, and planning for a regional food system, to quality-of-place projects like developing traditional arts and creative aging programs in multiple counties, doing a comprehensive assessment of trails and public land, and bringing arts performances and exhibitions to rural places like Brown County.
People in surrounding counties know that IU is a resource for them, but they don’t often know how to gain access to it, said Kyla Cox Deckard, director of communications for the center. The center can act as a “front door” or “portal” to help make connections between IU and their communities, she said.
For instance, it can help connect community groups to students who could do research for them, or pick up where previous research projects left off. It could connect people with subject experts at IU who could help to explain a complex topic to a group. Through a related program, IU Corps, the center can even connect IU students with volunteer work in Brown and surrounding counties, whether that’s helping to work a one-day festival or fundraiser or something more long-term, like tutoring.
The Center for Rural Engagement is an outgrowth of a regional study completed in 2014, called the Strategic Plan for Economic and Community Prosperity in Southwest Central Indiana. That plan also led to the establishment of other regional projects: the Regional Opportunities Initiative, which focuses on education and workforce development, and the Applied Research Institute, which focuses on defense research.
The IU music programs offered at the Brown County Schools campus are part of a rural arts series created by the IU Center for Rural Engagement and the IU Arts and Humanities Council. This academic year, Nashville, Huntingburg and Salem are receiving these partnerships.
In addition, IU master’s of art administration students are working with the Brown County Art Gallery, the B3 Gallery and community arts groups on various strategic plans, Deckard said.
More arts programs are planned in local schools and at the Brown County Playhouse yet this fall and in the spring.
IU Cinema will present a documentary about comedienne Gilda Radner at the Playhouse on Nov. 7, and on Dec. 5, the Playhouse will show “Monrovia,” a documentary about Monrovia, Indiana.
In early spring, the center also will be working in Brown County on a trails and public land assessment. This project, led by the Eppley Institute for Parks and Public Lands housed in the School of Public Health, will do an inventory of trails and public lands in southwest-central Indiana so that information can be shared with people in those counties, and with people elsewhere who might want to visit recreational areas.
In addition to helping rural communities, the center also allows members of the IU faculty and student body engage more with the counties and towns around them, getting them out of the IU bubble, Deckard said.
“Part of this is also making the campus community more aware,” she said. “They want to have a role.”
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IU Center for Rural Engagement
Website: rural.indiana.edu. Email link included under the “contact” tab.
Phone: 812-855-0568
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