INDEX MIAMI (IM) Artists will collaborate with businesses, cultural organizations and the general public along a route in the under-served communities of Allapattah, Overtown and Wynwood linking them via this route with the Wynwood Art District of Miami.

Artists will engage directly with representatives native to the communities to create new site- specific and context specific work along the chosen route.  This route with a map will become the central focus point of the project as it will serve as vehicle for the linkage between different people and visitors new to this area. Works will be created along this established route to serve as markers and as focal points to entice visitors to these areas. By establishing contact with local businesses and the public throughout the genesis of the project, IM will negotiate inroads to under-served communities through contemporary art practices and collaboration. Intimate details of life in these communities will be explored through direct communication between artists and the public culminating in site-specific artworks within these communities. The artists will employ this discovered local knowledge to create a physical mapping of these communities inclusive of local cultural lore and perspectives.  These maps will open routes into communities often overlooked by visitors and tourists generating much needed income to these economically challenged areas. An interactive tour of the sites and historical areas will be created to take people along the INDEX MIAMI Route.

IM is a platform for the interactions between 9 master and emerging artists in literature, dance, film, music, visual, food culture and performing arts and the community for a period of 6 months exploring different approaches to the tradition of art making. Each pair will select a site (recreational facility, school, commercial or residential property, or a church) and create an interactive, site-specific project that involves the people and places from each of the project communities. IM encourages artists to participate in the everyday urban life through its people and places creating relationships with the community. INDEX MIAMI addresses the need to develop new approaches to urban areas by taking an intimate look at the reality of the city and serving as a social catalyst to establish a network of people who embrace diversity on a multi-local level. This project will bring art directly to local doorsteps in order to engage and seduce the viewer with a purer, unmediated experience creating an increased awareness of the value of art through direct participation.

INDEX MIAMI will be launched in November 2009 running biennially with the main objective to help perpetuate Miami’s artistic heritage. EZ will support individual excellence by giving emerging artists time to learn, create and grow. IM is a celebration of the cultural history of Miami and the differences, which make us one of the most culturally wealthy cities in the USA.

INDEX MIAMI will be a model of partnership between the youth and experience, the community and the artists creating a bridge between different cultures and lives in the areas Allapattah, Overtown and Wynwood, as well as our art complex and the art community surrounding them. IM will document in a video the six month-long processes of relationships among artists, the communities and their creativity produced by a young filmmaker. A publication focusing on the 9 projects created and the community where they were held will accompany the final exhibition.