December Digital Cover Story - Ryan Hickey

Ryan Hickey: The Story Behind Oranje

Some people shift a city without intending to, simply by following an instinct at the right moment. Ryan Hickey—DJ Helicon—is one of those people. Before anyone here was talking about creative economies or cultural districts, he and his co-founder, Adam Crockett, were two twenty-somethings who didn’t want another predictable night out. They wanted something strange and electric and lived-in, something that matched the kind of talent they kept bumping into but rarely saw reflected anywhere in Indianapolis.

What they built became Oranje—a one-night, warehouse-born experiment that grew into a sixteen-year phenomenon; a contemporary art and music event showcasing progressive artists and musicians. It wasn’t curated polish; it was dust, lights, sound, risk, installation art, and the kind of collective energy that happens when a city briefly reveals what it could be. For a generation of local artists and audiences, Oranje cracked open a door that hadn’t existed. And when we created PATTERN Magazine and started hosting launch parties (here’s a nostalgic peek at Vol. 14 launch), we definitely took a page out of the Oranje playbook.

Ryan and I sat down to reminisce about those early days—the accidents and luck, the work, the burnout—and what he’s come to understand about Indy’s creative metabolism: where it’s grown, where it’s stuck, and what it might take to build something bold here again. Enjoy! - Polina

Per usual, we’ve edited the transcript for clarity and brevity.

Polina Osherov: What’s the earliest memory you have of planning Oranje?

Ryan Hickey: It wasn’t really one memory, more like a chain reaction. I’d just come back from studying in the Netherlands, and I’d gone to this event called Museum Nacht—museums stayed open late, changed the lighting, had DJs, drinks, food. It wasn’t fancy. It was fun. It pulled in people who didn’t normally do the museum thing. When I came back here, Indy was still very much a sports town—chain restaurants, Top 40 clubs, a cultural scene that felt…thin. But the crazy thing was, when Adam and I started going out every night and meeting people, you could feel the talent in the room, even if the room wasn’t built for them. DJ kids. Photographers. Painters doing strange, bold work. People who didn’t look like the “Indianapolis creative scene”—whatever that meant back then. It hit me that the talent was here. The outlet wasn’t. And once you see the gap that clearly, it’s almost impossible not to try filling it.

PO: How did you end up finding that first warehouse?

RH: By accident and luck. We originally thought this was going to be a house party. Truly. Maybe 20 people. Then someone says, “You should talk to my friend—he owns buildings.” So this guy takes us to the Morrison Opera Place downtown, right above where the Hard Rock Cafe used to be. And we’re thinking, Okay, cool. But then he says, “You can’t use this. A tenant’s moving in.” And it’s like…okay? What are we doing here then?

And he goes, “Well, if you’ve got time, there’s another building.” So we follow him through downtown and then south, and he opens this massive chain-link gate at 1200 South Madison. We pull in and it’s like walking into the final fight scene of an action movie. Five stories. Broken windows. A water tower on top like a sentinel. Conveyor belts bolted to the floor. Dust heavy in the air. We walked in and immediately said: this is it. He basically said, “Don’t burn it down,” and handed us the opportunity. That building gave the event its soul.

PO: And the name? Why “Oranje?”

RH: It tied back to the Dutch inspiration, but also the building sat at Madison and Orange Street. The Dutch spelling gave it a brand. I didn’t want a generic name like “Indianapolis Underground Art and Music Festival.” I wanted something mysterious and iconic that people could rally around.

PO: As the festival grew, what surprised you most?

RH: How game the artists were. We asked a lot of them—build a booth, create an environment, don’t show up with a table and a tent. Some people didn’t want that, and that’s fine, but the ones who leaned in…man. The first year, a traditional portrait photographer built a darkroom as her booth. Red light, prints hanging from clothespins. Another guy hung chains from the ceiling and suspended his paintings. It became a domino effect. Once one person went bold, everybody else wanted to match it or top it.

Watching setup days, watching that creativity come alive in a grimy warehouse, became my favorite part of the entire festival.

PO: How did you pay for the first few years?

RH: Honestly, we didn’t—not in the way people imagine events are funded today. The first few years were almost entirely sweat equity. The building that first year was basically free or close to it. Maybe a couple hundred dollars. We printed about 2,000 flyers—literally physical flyers—because this was pre-social media, pre-Instagram, pre-anything. We had no website. We had an info line you could call where a friend recorded the date and location like it was a rave in 1997.

Everything else was just us grinding. I was bartending downtown at a new club, and that became my unofficial operations center. I talked about Oranje to anyone who would listen, night after night, shift after shift. Adam and I were out six nights a week handing out flyers, having conversations, doing the kind of street-level marketing you can’t fake. It really did feel like running a political campaign.

Production was bare bones: a couple security guards, one sound guy, a handful of friends who showed up because they believed in the idea. The rest—clearing the building, hauling out old furniture, cleaning floors, setting up electrical, painting, building out spaces—we did ourselves. Hundreds of hours in that warehouse without getting paid a dime.

So the short answer is: we paid with time, sweat, and youth—the only resources we had in abundance. And somehow, that was enough to get the whole thing off the ground.

PO: Why did Oranje eventually end?

RH: Several things. Adam stepped away after year ten; burnout sets in when you carry sponsorships, logistics, curation, everything. Real estate redevelopment also swallowed up the types of industrial spaces the event needed. And financially—it was becoming impossible for me personally to spend eight months a year on something without being able to make a living from it. We had almost no major sponsors; the biggest check we ever got was maybe $10,000. That’s nothing for the level of production people came to expect.

PO: What did Oranje prove?

RH: I think Oranje proved, more than anything, that Indy was hungry for something it didn’t even know how to ask for yet. We went into that first year thinking, “If 200 people come, that’ll be great.” And then about 700 showed up. It was insane! People stayed hours longer than they planned. Artists who assumed our crowd wouldn’t buy their work ended up selling pieces. People bought their first piece of art ever at Oranje. And the artists who took risks with their booths weren’t punished for it—the audience loved it. They came to be surprised.

It also proved that this city has always had the talent; it just needed a platform that matched its ambition. The artists who were doing incredible work—the ones most people never saw—suddenly had a space where their creativity wasn’t just tolerated, it was the point.

And the echoes of that are still here. I still get asked every month whether I’m bringing Oranje back. That tells me it filled a void, and that even all these years later, people remember how it made the city feel for one night. Oranje proved Indy was capable of more, and that people wanted more, even if they didn’t realize it until it was right in front of them.

PO: From your vantage point, how has Indy changed creatively since those early years?

RH:  It’s changed, absolutely—just in ways that are a little complicated to describe. There’s definitely more talent here now. More young people, more diverse voices, more creators who aren’t afraid to put their work out in the world. When we were doing Oranje, we’d meet these incredible artists who felt totally unseen because there just weren’t that many platforms. Now there are more pockets, more opportunities, and definitely more people who identify as creative in some way. So the raw material, the talent, is here in a bigger and broader way than it was in the early 2000s.

But the behavior around creativity has shifted. Back then, if you wanted to be part of anything interesting, you physically had to show up. You had to go out, talk to people, experience things in person. That’s how communities formed; that’s how ideas spread. We didn’t have smartphones or social media in any meaningful way. Your attention wasn’t split in fifteen directions. People were simply out more—exploring, bumping into each other, taking chances.

Now, devices have pulled so much of people’s energy inward. COVID amplified that. Being home is easier. Consuming culture through a screen is easier. And when that becomes the default, it’s harder to create those sparks that come from bodies in a room together. It’s harder to build momentum.

So yes, there’s more talent and more potential. But attention is fragmented, and the habit of showing up isn’t as strong. That’s the tension I see. 

PO: Why do you think cool things here struggle to scale into institutions the way SXSW blew up in Austin, or Meow Wolf in Santa Fe?

RH: I’ve thought about this a lot, and honestly, I think it comes down to support—not enthusiasm, but actual structural backing. I’ll never forget someone at Visit Indy telling me, probably seven years into Oranje, “This could be the South By of Indianapolis. I really think you have that potential.” And I believed them. I really did. Oranje had the energy, the audience, the talent. It had all the early ingredients that something like SXSW had at the beginning.

But the difference is, SXSW had institutional buy-in. They had the city, the corporate community, the funders, people with influence, saying: “This matters. We will stand behind it. We will help you scale.”

We never had that here. Not even close.

I spent an unbelievable amount of time trying to get sponsorship dollars that, in the big picture, were tiny. I was having repeated meetings begging global companies for $5,000 or $10,000 checks—amounts that honestly mean nothing to them. That’s couch-cushion money for a regional rep of a major brand. And yet it took tremendous effort to pull even that out. Meanwhile, the expectations around the event kept growing. People wanted more production, more polish, more everything, but the resources didn’t grow with it.

You can only white-knuckle something on passion for so long before you hit a ceiling.

And it doesn’t mean people here don’t care. They do. But caring and advocating aren’t the same thing. Austin had people who pushed SXSW uphill—politically, financially, culturally. Meow Wolf found a wealthy patron in George R.R. Martin who affordably leased them a vacant 33,000-square-foot bowling alley to do with whatever they wanted to. Indy hasn’t historically done that for creative things on that scale. The events that break through here usually do because they have institutional roots, not because a couple of people built something cool and the city decided to elevate it.

So when things don’t scale here, it’s not because the idea isn’t good enough. It’s because the infrastructure—the long-term commitment, the funding, the belief—doesn’t lock in behind it. And without that, even the best ideas can only grow so far.

PO: I’ve been thinking a lot about how Indy can better integrate creatives into the sports economy and major sporting events. What do you think?

RH: Let me start by saying this: I genuinely love the people at Sports Corp and the folks involved in planning these big sporting moments. They work incredibly hard, and I’ve been part of enough committees to know the pressure they’re under. When you’re producing something on that scale, with major sports organizations as your primary stakeholders, there are hundreds of moving parts and almost no room for error. So I want to give them credit—they’re good people doing heavy lifts.

But even with that said, creatives often end up as a checkbox. It becomes let’s hire a bunch of DJs, put up a mural, maybe drop in a pop-up, and that’s considered integrating the creative community. And yes, it’s fun for the visitor. It looks good in an impact report. But it doesn’t create legacy impact for the artists themselves. Most of the corporate event planners and agencies who come into town never actually meet local creatives. They’re too busy, or they’re operating remotely, or they’re only here to execute. There’s no relationship built, no pipeline for future work, no way for a creative to step from “activation” into “career opportunity.”

And that’s really the core issue. Until someone in power says, This isn’t just decorative—this is a priority, it’s hard to make deeper integration happen. You’d need host committees, brands, and the city itself to view creatives not as atmosphere, but as partners who add cultural weight. Without that intentional decision at the top, it stays surface-level. But the potential is absolutely there—the city just has to choose it.

PO: For emerging creatives, what’s the biggest opportunity right now?

RH: The biggest opportunity is that Indy finally has an audience that’s open to buying art and supporting creative work in a way that didn’t really exist twenty years ago. Back then, there just weren’t as many people here who thought about putting original artwork in their homes or who understood the value of engaging with local creative culture. Now you’ve got younger professionals, people relocating from bigger cities, people who travel more, and they bring different expectations and tastes with them. They’re looking for something with personality, something that’s not mass-produced, and they’re willing to spend money on it.

On top of that, the Internet gives artists visibility far beyond this city, which is something we absolutely didn’t have when Oranje started. Someone making work in Indy can suddenly reach people nationally or internationally. You’re not limited by geography anymore—Indy is your base, not your boundary. So between a more receptive local audience and the ability to reach people everywhere else, I think there’s more possibility for a sustainable creative career here than people realize.

PO: What’s the biggest trap?

RH: Thinking that digital reach replaces real work. There’s more noise and competition than ever. Attention is harder to win. You have to build community, show up, and outwork the distractions.

PO: If you could wave a magic wand and change one thing to improve Indy’s creative culture, what might that be?

RH: I’d get people to go out. Truly. Leave the house. Go to a jazz show. Go see a painter’s opening. Go to something weird on a Thursday. When we did Oranje, I’d tell people: just give me one night out of the whole year—don’t go to the same bar, don’t stay home, come experience this. And people did. If Indy showed up for its creatives even once a month, this city would look different.

PO: When people ask what you do, how do you describe yourself?

RH: I usually start by saying I’m a DJ, because that’s the cleanest entry point, but it doesn’t actually cover much of what I do or how I work. Music was the gateway, sure, I’ve always loved music, played instruments in school, sang in choir, went to shows constantly—but DJing, for me, was never just about being behind turntables. It was the thing that opened the door to events, to art, to building experiences and connecting people.

I tend to think of myself more as a connector or an orchestrator. I’m not the traditional “artist” who paints or sculpts, but I see the vision for something and then I understand how to pull the people, the details, and the logistics together to make it real. That’s where I get energy. I’m a creative director in that sense, taking a concept and shaping it, anticipating problems before they happen, knowing how the pieces fit.

And I’m a learner. I’m always exploring, always looking for what’s next, never wanting to get too comfortable. That mindset is probably why I’ve kept doing all kinds of creative work long after Oranje; it’s the same instinct, just applied in different places.

PO: Under what conditions would Oranje ever make a one-time comeback?

RH: It would take the right space—something with soul, not drywall. It would take a real check from someone who believes in it. And honestly, it would take a next generation ready to run with it. If I ever did it again, it would be as a springboard for them, not for nostalgia. Bring in the old guy to help unlock the door, sure. But the party has to belong to the next wave.

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This story was made possible thanks to the generous support of our friends at Life in Indy.