Jeff Sparks, Senior Fellow at Sagamore Institute since 2014, has embodied the Institute’s commitment to producing “real results” in the vast array of different work he has performed throughout his life. For ten years from 1980 to 1990, Sparks ran the Indiana Christian Children’s Home, a treatment center for emotionally disturbed children. He followed this daunting assignment with an equally varied pursuit – unsatisfied with the state of cultural production in the Midwest, Sparks joined with a small group of like minded individuals to found a non-profit called the New Harmony Project. Based in New Harmony, Indiana, there they established a writer’s lab which supplies local talent with the creative ecosystem necessary to share and refine their voices. In the same vein, he also worked to establish the long-running and nationally renowned Heartland Film Festival in 1992 so as to honor and develop local filmmakers.
