I learn something new about myself or about a piece of the world every time I walk through a museum, reading the plaques and spending time with the art. It’s a great way to get to know your city, too.
For college students who need a break from classes but don’t want to break the bank, a student ID is the ticket to discounts on all kinds of arts and culture experiences.
Cinephiles can get a discount on membership at Kan-Kan Cinema and Restaurant. If you’re looking for a fancy date-night, students get cheaper tickets at Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra. And you can grab some friends and check out lesser-known spots, including the Indiana Medical History Museum.
Are you an Indianapolis arts & culture organization that offers discounts to students? Send us the details at sophie.young@mirrorindy.org.
The Cabaret
📍 924 N. Pennsylvania St.
🎟️ Limited number of $25 student tickets for every show
The Cabaret uses a quote from Isaac Mizrahi to define the art form it’s named after: “Cabaret is theater plus liquor.” Really, cabaret is a performance meant to draw you in, to make a song a conversation between a performer and the audience. This is Indy’s only spot dedicated to cabaret, although it hosts jazz and Broadway performers, too.
Cabaret has a discount ticket program for people 35 and younger and a limited number of $25 student tickets for every show. It offers more for students, too: masterclasses, pre-show performances, professional development workshops and internships.
Newfields
📍 4000 Michigan Road
🎟️ One-year free student membership
Newfields is a great spot to explore by yourself or to take your family for a visit. It’s Indy’s biggest art museum, with beautiful gardens to explore outside and a restored mansion the Lilly family (of Eli Lilly) owned.
Newfields leans into events for each season. It’s covered in pumpkins and spooky decor for Harvest Nights. At Winterlights, light displays sync up to songs from the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra and every room in the Lilly House is decorated with a festive theme.
Newfields offers a one-year free student membership for anyone enrolled in a college, university or trade school in the state. You can fill out a form online or go to the welcome desk. If you bring a guest who’s not a student on the first Thursday of each month, they get in free, too.
Eiteljorg Museum
📍 500 W. Washington St.
🎟️ If you’re in college or trade school, you get free admission with your school ID.
Indiana got its name because it was a land indigenous people inhabited first. The Eiteljorg is a museum dedicated to telling the stories of indigenous people in North America.
If you want to explore this history, you can start in galleries showcasing the art about the American West or more traditional Native art. Then, head to “Voice of the Arctic,” an exhibition on contemporary Inuit art that shows you how climate change is affecting the Arctic. The exhibition is open until April 2026.
Make sure to check out the indoor-outdoor cafe, which has a great quesadilla.
Indiana Repertory Theatre
📍 140 W. Washington St.
🎟️ College students with an ID can buy youth-priced tickets to shows.
This upcoming season of shows has range: an Alfred Hitchcock adaptation, a story of the “Godmother of Rock ‘n’ Roll” and an annual favorite, “The Christmas Carol.” When I’ve seen shows at the IRT, I’m struck by their stunning set design.
College students with an ID can buy youth-priced tickets to shows. For one upcoming show, general admission tickets were about $50. With a student ID, tickets were reduced to about $30.
If you donate to IRT when you check out, the money goes toward tickets for grade school student.
Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra
📍 Hilbert Circle Theatre, 45 Monument Circle
🎟️ Students can get $15 tickets for most concerts. You get one ticket per student ID, and you have to bring your ID to show at the box office.
Monument Circle is an iconic Indianapolis spot. Hilbert Circle Theatre is right on the circle, and it’s a beautiful old theater that offers a classic orchestra experience or more modern events. This season, see versions of music by classical composers, listen to covers of ABBA or watch the holiday classic “Home Alone” as the ISO performs the score.
Fonseca Theatre
📍 2508 W. Michigan St.
🎟️ Student tickets are $15.
Fonseca Theatre started on the Near Westside to highlight the area’s diverse history through plays. The theater also encourages the next generation of theater kids with affordable performance art workshops.
The 2025-2026 season at Fonseca Theatre starts Oct. 17- Nov. 2 with a multicultural Halloween celebration. There’s also a May 2026 show that explores redemption through the art of sandwich-making, and the season ends next summer with a bilingual musical of Frida Kahlo’s childhood.
Indiana State Museum
📍 650 W. Washington St.
🎟️ Indiana college students get $5 museum admission with a student ID.
Learn about famous Hoosiers, Native American history or sea creatures. Bonus: You can buy tickets to a movie at the IMAX theater while you’re there.
Benjamin Harrison Presidential Site
📍 1230 N. Delaware St.
🎟️ General admission tickets are $11 for college students with an ID, which is $5 off the regular price.
Benjamin Harrison was the 23rd President of the United States, but before that, he prosecuted a famous double-murder case as an attorney and led troops in the Civil War for three years. He also had a second marriage—to his deceased first wife’s niece—and hired the White House’s first Black chef, Dolly Johnson.
You can tour his family home and learn more about Harrison’s life and legacy. The Benjamin Harrison Presidential Site also has special events throughout the year: “The Witching Hour” tour for Halloween, a late-summer croquet tournament with an all-white dress code and the Juneteenth festival inspired by Chef Johnson.
Kurt Vonnegut Museum and Library
📍 543 Indiana Ave.
🎟️ For students, tickets are $8.
Kurt Vonnegut was one of the most famous authors from Indiana. Inside this museum, you’ll find his typewriter, a gallery of rejection letters and his Purple Heart, from his time as a soldier and prisoner of war in World War II.
If you go, schedule a tour with the museum’s curator, Charles LaFave. He’ll leave you thinking and laughing.
Indiana Medical History Museum
📍 3270 Kirkbride Way
🎟️ If you want to go, schedule a tour ahead of time. College or trade school students get in for $7 with their ID.
A friend and I made a bucket list of Indiana’s weirdest museums, and this was on it. Inside the museum, you’ll find brains and organs preserved in jars. It’s also on the grounds of the former Central State Hospital, a psychiatric treatment facility that operated from 1848 to 1994.
If you’re a plant parent, check out the garden full of medicinal plants.
Kan-Kan Cinema & Restaurant
📍 1258 Windsor St.
🎟️ Discount on its Super 8 membership
For the movie-lovers who are also college students, Kan-Kan offers a discount on its Super 8 membership. That means two free tickets per year, early pre-sale for films and access to members-only events.
It’s a nonprofit arthouse cinema, which means you’ll get lots of indie films and some fun events series, like Book to Film club, where you can decide once and for all if the book is always better.
Indiana Historical Society
📍 450 W. Ohio St.
🎟️ Students get tickets at youth prices, which is $5.
For every kind of history nerd, there’s an exhibit here. Right now, you can see how the electric railway changed Indiana, how Notre Dame University students resisted the KKK in the 1920s and how much we’ve always loved eating out in an exhibit called “Hungry, Hungry Hoosiers.”
Inside, the Basile History Market is a combination museum gift shop and independent bookstore, filled with Indiana-themed items.
Phoenix Theatre Cultural Centre
📍 705 N Illinois St.
🎟️ Student ticket prices are $10 off general admission prices.
This season at the Phoenix Theatre, you’ll get a mix of contemporary shows: a history of NASA’s connection with Nazis, a woman whose pen pal is on death row, a dance performance and storytelling for spooky season.
That variety is what you can typically expect from the Phoenix Theatre, because it’s home to four theater companies: Actors Ink, for people over the age of 65; Summit Performance Indianapolis, focused on women; the Indianapolis Shakespeare company; and American Lives Theater. While you wait for a show to start, you can walk through a gallery of contemporary art.
Related
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Creepy comedies, holiday spectaculars and thoughtful adaptations of MLK are all in playwright Lou Harry’s season preview picks.
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Mirror Indy reporter Sophie Young covers services and resources. Contact her at sophie.young@mirrorindy.org.
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