The Indianapolis Foundation Funding ‘Radical Imagination’ Creative Grants for Public School Teachers Across Indianac

The notion of entrusting a teacher with money and no script seems almost archaic. Give them a check, inquire as to what they would construct if no one intervened, and then take a step back. Though most people outside the field are unaware of it, the Indianapolis Foundation‘s Radical Imagination Creative Grants program has quietly emerged as one of the more intriguing developments in Indiana education at the moment.

Teachers in public schools throughout the state receive the grants. By philanthropic standards, the funds are not substantial. However, the framing is important. The foundation is asking teachers more along the lines of, “What would you try if the usual constraints loosened a little?” rather than polished proposals linked to rigorous curriculum metrics or gains on standardized tests. It’s a minor linguistic change. It modifies the types of ideas that emerge.

On a weekday afternoon in almost any central Indiana public school, you can witness the limitations in action: fluorescent hallways, humming copy machines, and a science teacher washing beakers in the same chipped sink they’ve been using since 2012. District budgets are being tightened by Indiana’s new property tax caps, and there is a great deal of concern about what will be cut next. A grant intended for creativity seems almost defiant in that setting. Maybe that’s the point.

For many years, the Indianapolis Foundation, a division of the larger Central Indiana Community Foundation, has provided funding for the facilities, initiatives, and training that make up public education. The grants from Radical Imagination seem like a different wager. They are not as big. They are private. Instead of central offices, they are sent to specific teachers. Additionally, they have faith in those educators to understand what their students truly require—a level of trust that the system doesn’t always uphold.

You can understand why this strikes a chord with the larger philanthropic scene in Indiana. Through its twin K–12 initiatives, the Lilly Endowment invested $460 million in Marion County schools towards the end of last year. Just Perry Township took home $40 million. These are the kind of eye-catching figures that finance entire entrepreneurial pathways and new building wings. The grants from Radical Imagination operate in a different register that is closer to the classroom floor, quieter, and more detailed.

A mission statement doesn’t tell you as much as what teachers actually do with the money. A darkroom could be constructed from the ground up by a high school art instructor. To record stories with eighth graders, a middle school history teacher may invite local oral historians. A first-grade teacher might transform a reading nook into a miniature theater. This doesn’t fit neatly into a spreadsheet. That’s the idea, sort of.

Teachers feel that this type of funding grants them permission that they were unaware they needed. For many, teaching in a public school has come to be defined by what you can’t do: you can’t stray from the pace guide, you can’t take a chance on a lesson that might fail, or you can’t spend an unapproved dollar. “Try the thing” grants have a different impact. In some of the conversations, it’s difficult to ignore the relief.

A different question is whether the model scales. Funding for foundations is limited, and creative grants are infamously difficult to review within the timeframes that boards prefer. It remains to be seen if the Radical Imagination program will remain this loose as it expands or if metrics’ gravitational pull will eventually transform it into something more traditional. That’s how philanthropy tends to go.

For the time being, however, the program is taking a unique approach in a state where disputes over school funding are often depressing. It serves as a reminder to educators and perhaps the rest of us that creativity is still considered infrastructure.