ARTS

A hearty welcome to the 2015 Arts Journalism Fellows

Wei-Huan Chen
wei-huan.chen@indystar.com
Oreka TX (Harkaitz Martinez, left, and Mikel Ugarte) played the Lotus World Music & Arts Festival in 2010. This year’s festival in Bloomington runs Sept. 24-27.

This fall, five talented collegiate journalists will be helping the Indianapolis Star supplement its coverage of the arts. They will write stories, produce video and contribute to multimedia projects about the people and organizations who shape and define Indianapolis.

This team of scrappy arts geeks will widen the scope of the Star’s arts coverage, which means more stories about the emerging tattoo artist, the innovative classical trio and the big museum whose decisions impact the city culturally and economically.

The fellowship program, part of The Indianapolis Arts Journalism & Audience Development Project, is made possible through a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. Seeing shrinking arts coverage across the nation, the NEA invited organizations to come up with new ways to bolster arts coverage, foster young arts journalists’ careers and increase awareness of local arts organizations.

The IndyStar, along with the Arts Council of Indianapolis, which administers the program, will join this national effort this fall by bringing on the 2015 Arts Journalism Fellows. The Arts Council will pay the Fellows a stipend. The Fellows will work as IndyStar correspondents and be paid on a per-article basis. They’ll working with our reporters and editors and through occasional roundtable discussions with local arts leaders. All content produced by the fellows is exclusive to the IndyStar and under our full editorial control.

And what the Fellows do will be nothing to scoff at. What they do — writing about the arts — is vital. Yes, vital. There is no other word for it.

Arts organizations within the visual arts, classical, jazz, opera, dance, and theater worlds, after all, have long struggled to reach an audience beyond their existing fan-base. This is true in Indianapolis, where leaders have told me repeatedly that marketing and awareness is among the most pressing issues facing their organizations.

Here in Indianapolis, the arts generate $384 million in economic activity and support 10,000 full-time jobs . The Arts Council of Indianapolis, which helps fund 75 Marion County arts organizations, receives $1.3 million annually in city funding. That is about one tenth of 1 percent of the city’s total budget.

Nearly every person working in the arts here has told me that it’s vital to foster a cohort of arts writers with the skills and platform to reach a broad audience. That’s exactly what we’re working to do. We’re investing in these five young writers and investing in the arts. Meet the people who will help make this happen:

Tyler Dague is a 2015 graduate of Anderson University with a bachelor’s degree in communications and a cognate in arts journalism. He was a writer and associate editor with the Andersonian, Anderson University’s student newspaper, before becoming editor-in-chief in January 2014. His most recent internship was with Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York, communicating directly with the public at each of their summer concert series. During his time with the Andersonian, he received several awards from the Indiana Collegiate Press Association including Best Entertainment Feature. Dague is originally from St. Clairsville, Ohio.

Jorge Dorantes is a digital media freelancer with eight years of experience in the fields of design, photography, and video production. Raised primarily in northern Indiana and a resident of Indianapolis since 2010, Dorantes has worked in a variety of roles with several Indianapolis nonprofits, including the Indianapolis Museum of Art, Heartland Truly Moving Pictures, and the Arts Council of Indianapolis. He is currently a student at IUPUI working toward completing a dual degree with majors in journalism and visual media. Dorantes is on track to graduate with his degrees in the fall.

Alison Graham is a junior at Indiana University studying journalism with a minor in international studies. She has worked for the Indiana Daily Student as an arts beat reporter, section editor and managing editor. She traveled to Vienna, Austria, to work for the International Press Institute and was an intern at the Hendricks County Flyer this past summer. Graham is from Indianapolis, Indiana.

Marah Harbison is a senior at Indiana University studying journalism and arts management. Born and raised in Louisville, Harbison has been passionate about writing and the arts since a young age. She is an Indiana University Founders Scholar, and in 2014, she was awarded the Patricia Beach Smith scholarship for journalism students interested in arts. Harbison has been a competitive Irish dancer since age 6, competing at the world championships and touring Ireland with a professional show. She hopes to one day cover the arts for a national publication or work in public relations for an arts organization.

Gabby McLemore is a junior at Indiana University majoring in journalism and education while minoring in communications and culture and telecommunications. McLemore is a native of Columbus, Ind., where she was heavily involved in the journalism department at Columbus North High School while also playing on the school’s volleyball team and performing in the drama department. McLemore recently completed an internship with the Senate Communications office at The Indiana Statehouse in Indianapolis and hopes to pursue a career in journalism upon graduation in 2017.