Rooted in the Past, Growing into the Future

Dr. Eva Marie Shivers talks about Indigo Community Healing Arts – its past, present, and future.

From our inception and founding Indigo Cultural Center has always centered social justice, culture and community. For the past 18 years we have built a strong national reputation in the early childhood field and have provided research, evaluation, trainings, consultation, advocacy and policy support to cities, states, and communities around the country. 

But I’d like to go back in time and share a little bit about Indigo’s history with arts and community and healing. Nearly two decades ago Indigo was dreamt up by me and my best friend, Dr. Raquel Monroe, who is an Indigo board member and the newly appointed Dean of the Chadwick A. Boseman College of Fine Arts at Howard University in Washington, D.C. Dr. Monroe and I were laying outside in a hammock side by side, and while looking at the beautiful late Arizona summer sunset, we co-created a dream which we quickly named Indigo Cultural Center. 

This original dream envisioned three divisions – two of which have been and are continuing to be fully realized - beyond our wildest dreams! The third division, previously known as Indigo Arts for Social Justice – was intermittently visited throughout the past two decades. About every other year or so we collaborate with other community organizations here in Phoenix, Arizona and co-create offerings with a focus on art, community voice, healing and social justice. 

Some of our past partners have included:

• Arizona School for the Arts,

• The Alliance for Family, Friend, and Neighbor Child Care, 

• Arizona PBS, 

• and Arizona State University's Museum of Walking

This year – in 2025 – we are so excited and honored to be launching a fuller vision for our community arts division now known as Indigo Community Healing Arts.

The vision for Indigo Community Healing Arts is directly influenced by the whispers of my ancestors. I am a proud 3rd generation Black Phoenician, and care deeply about our community’s wellness. Indigo Community Healing Arts offers diverse forms of programming in the Black Phoenix community that amplifies our collective strength, resilience, and ability to cultivate our own medicine and healing in the form of community interdependence, creative expression, and ways of knowing and healing passed down from our ancestors. 

So, as you browse our website and materials please let us know how you’d like to be involved with our efforts– whether you are a community arts activist, a healer, a community advocate, a family member, or someone who cares deeply about the wellbeing of the Black community. Join us!

And while we maintain a commitment to a central focus on the Black community here in Phoenix, the Afri-centric principles – that we lift up and embody – are beneficial to all communities everywhere, and EVERYONE is welcome to join us in this grand journey.

We can’t wait to co-create with you!

Past Creative Community Collaborations

Reflective Consultation and Sponsorship for Student-Artist-Activists

In the Spring of 2012 a small group of high school student-artist-activists from Arizona School for the Arts (ASA) came together to create the ‘Passion Archeologists’ as part of their senior-year capstone project. Indigo Cultural Center provided reflective consultation for this group of student-artist-activists as they provided after-school arts classes for The Children First Leadership Academy (CFLA) formerly known as Children First Academy Phoenix and Thomas J. Pappas School. Indigo also hosted a fundraiser for the Passion Archaeologists to raise money for Children First Academy. The fundraising event which included art auctions, live entertainment, and art activities for children helped to raise enough funds to enable Children First Academy to purchase a projector for their school’s auditorium.

Raising Children of American Community Screening at FilmBar

Healthy families make healthy communities -- What would our downtown Phoenix community look and feel like if we worked together on diminishing inequities so that all young children had access to quality early childhood education?

On March 24, 2015, Indigo Cultural Center joined the Alliance for Family, Friend, and Neighbor Care for a community screening of the first episode of Raising Children of America, a PBS series on changing the conversation around early childhood. During this event at FilmBar, community members discussed the importance of quality early childhood education and its effects on our families, communities and nation. 

Learn more at: https://www.facebook.com/events/376897975827030

Walking with Black Phoenicians: Journeying Towards Peace Amid Chaos 

On October 13, 2018, in collaboration with Arizona State University's Museum of Walking, Indigo Cultural Center held a museum walk honoring artist Earl Cooke, who has been an active member of this neighborhood and a contributor to the arts in Phoenix for several decades.

At this event, we walked the Historical Jefferson Street Corridor – from 16th Street to 7th Street in downtown Phoenix. Known as the ‘Black Corridor,’ this 1-mile stretch was and still is considered the heartbeat or epicenter of African American cultural life. This historical and cultural trail acknowledges and pays homage to the educational, religious, political, social and cultural sites of key structures, buildings and places that paralleled key moments in the history of black Phoenicians and that comprises part of the national tapestry of civil rights history.

Learn more about the Museum of Walking at: www.museumofwalking.org

Artwork Shown: Earl Cook, Sisters of Africa, acrylic on canvas, 1986

Photograph of Artist Earl Cooke

American Creed Screening with PBS Arizona

On April 24, 2018, In collaboration with PBS Arizona, Indigo Cultural Center held a community screening of the documentary "American Creed" to support the launch of Indigo Cultural Center's second decade of equity visioning. 

Learn more about American Creed at: https://www.americancreed.org/