OPINION

Smith: The stage for Indy street performers just got bigger

Erika D. Smith
erika.smith@indystar.com

Performers have been dancing, singing, beating instruments and even spinning fire on the sidewalks of Mass Ave for almost a decade. Passers-by often stop, laugh, clap and sometimes offer the performers money.

We call this the IndyFringe Theatre Festival and it happens every August.

For even longer, men and women have been dancing, singing, beating instruments and acting like statues on the sidewalks near Circle Centre Mall, Banker’s Life Fieldhouse and Monument Circle. Passers-by often slow to stroll, smile, laugh, and sometimes drop a dollar or two in a bucket.

We call these people performing for money buskers or panhandlers, and it happens every weekend.

What’s the difference?

In many ways, not a lot. Both are examples of talented people performing for our amusement. They’re people who are using the arts to add personality and vibrancy to Downtown.

Both bring value to our city, and I’m not the only one who thinks so.

Indianapolis Downtown Inc., IndyFringe and the Arts Council of Indianapolis have teamed up to create a five-week pilot program called the “Downtown Indy Buskers Campaign.”

It starts this weekend and it will do two things:

First, it will serve as an advertising campaign for the IndyFringe festival, which runs from Aug. 14 to Aug. 24 at theaters mostly along Mass Ave. The festival’s street performers in past years have stuck to Mass Ave, so it would have been easy to be in Downtown during the festival and not know it was happening.

Under the new campaign, IDI will pay a group of buskers, hand-selected by IndyFringe, to perform Fridays and Saturdays at various locations in Downtown, including Monument Circle, near Georgia Street and the Indiana Convention Center.

“The idea of partnering with IndyFringe is we’re going to get some acts who know what they’re doing,” said Bob Schultz, IDI’s vice president of marketing and communications.

He’s right. The busking acts in Downtown are hit or miss.

Which brings me to the second goal of the program: To turn Indianapolis into a city with talented street performers, and visitors who expect and appreciate them.

Think of it as training wheels for building a big-city busking culture. It also lays the groundwork for helping Hoosiers explore the arts in a more casual way.

“The whole idea is encouraging this kind of street entertainment which, we think, is part of urban authenticity," Schultz said. “This is something we want to do more of Downtown.”

There’s one more thing in it for IDI, too. Discouraging panhandling.

Much ado has been made about the men and women who sit on street corners holding cups and raggedy cardboard signs. Some Downtown business owners swear that panhandlers scare customers away. Tourism officials insist trade groups won’t hold conventions here because we have too many unseemly beggars. City officials say they make Downtown seem unsafe.

I’m skeptical of all of that. But encouraging busking will solve the panhandling “problem” a lot faster and a lot more effectively than any heavy-handed ordinance.

Think about it: If you walk out of a Pacers game and on one corner, you see a guy banging the life out of a drum and on another corner, you see a guy with a cup and a sign that says: “Why lie? It’s for beer,” who will you give money to?

Buskers disrupt the business model of lazy panhandling — and that’s what we need to happen. They also liven up the streets, as IndyFringe has proved for almost a decade on Mass Ave.

All of this makes the “Downtown Indy Buskers Campaign” a pilot program with a lot of potential.

Contact Star columnist Erika D. Smith at (317) 444-6424, erika.smith@indystar.com, on Twitter at @erika_d_smith or at www.facebook.com/ErikaDSmith.Journalist.