By Josh Usmani
Recently, Cuyahoga Arts and Culture (CAC) and the Community Partnership for Arts and Culture (CPAC) announced they would be postponing the application process for this year’s Creative Workforce Fellowships. Each year, the program presents individual artists 20 awards of $20,000 (and supplemental support) for each recipient to use to advance their creative and professional development.
In the years since the last major economic collapse, these fellowships (and similar programs) have helped support individuals and organizations working to improve our community in ways that are often very difficult to articulate and break down into a spreadsheet.
The value of art is difficult to calculate economically, because you don’t need to buy art to appreciate it. In fact, sometimes you can’t buy the work at all. The value of art is a debate currently taking place in regard to school curriculums all over the country.
While the program is still relatively new – six years into its ten year commitment, the impact of it (and programs like it throughout the region) have made a real, tangible difference in our community. It may not be noticeable from the outside, but life-long residents can feel the positive changes throughout Cleveland and Northeast Ohio.
When the program was “paused” in the spring, the announcement created uncertainty and a great deal of fear amongst some members of the creative community. This past Thursday (7/24), the City Club hosted an open discussion between the public and CAC’s Karen Gahl-Mills and CPAC’s Tom Schorgl.
During the nearly 2-hour discussion, many members of the creative community, including a number of Fellows, were given an opportunity to ask questions, voice their concerns and make suggestions. Overall, the dialogue was positive, with Ms. Gahl-Mills stating many times that the “pause” was due to a desire to review the recommendations of CPAC’s independent evaluation before beginning this year’s selection process.
Ms. Gahl-Mills stated that it was CPAC that initiated the independent review of the Fellowships as part of their effort to collect data on the program. She said that CAC never asked CPAC to review the program. The duo did their best to quell any talk of “suspension” or worse. However, Ms. Gahl-Mills explained an anticipated drop-off in “Sin Tax” revenue, and conceded that the program (along with all the programs CAC funds) will be re-evaluated moving forward.
To the surprise of many, including Mr. Schorgl (judging by the look on his face at the time), Ms. Gahl-Mills stated that the results of the evaluation revealed a misalignment between the goals of CAC and CPAC. This prompted the moderator, Dan Moulthrop, and multiple audience members to ask for clarification.
In essence, it comes down to funding “Community Vibrancy” versus awarding “Artistic Excellence.” CAC is a public funder with understandable concerns about the ways in which the money is utilized. CPAC is a private organization, and Mr. Schorgl strongly reinforced CPAC’s steadfast mission as an advocate and asset for the creative community.
Both agreed that the goal of the Fellowships is (and should be) to do both. The two parties eventually agreed with the audience that it was essentially semantics. When it comes to the arts in Northeast Ohio, there is no difference between “Community Vibrancy” and “Artistic Excellence.” If you want respect in our community, you better be doing both.
The question appears to be, “How does artistic excellence contribute to the vibrancy of our community?” There are countless stories of individuals, nonprofits and their programs doing wonderful things for our community. As a whole, the arts community (visual, drama, dance, music, etc.) represents a major portion of our population. Thanks to a long legacy of private financial support by the city’s wealthy elite, Cleveland has an unusually strong cultural infrastructure.
Why do we need to support art? Art is more than pretty pictures and accurate renderings. The best art has the priceless ability to inspire its viewer to see life from a new perspective. The goal of the most successful arts projects and events is often to add a sense of community to our region. Gallery openings, theater productions, concerts and day/weekend-long festivals bring hundreds (if not thousands) of people together from many, diverse backgrounds. Without these events, we would have a serious void in our cultural identity, and our most talented creatives wouldn’t have opportunities to showcase their talents.
Northeast Ohio’s greatest resource is our people. If you want to see positive, organic change throughout the community, public and private programs need to continue to provide the people (and their projects) with the resources to not just accomplish but excel. If our residents succeed, our region succeeds.
These hardworking artists will continue to do exciting, positive things in the community regardless of the fate of the Fellowships. However, the more resources that our hardest working residents have, the better off we’ll all be in the long run.
Anyone familiar with Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs should understand the importance of a program that provides enough financial support for highly talented, passionate, dedicated artists to pursue their highest potential. After all, no matter how much potential we have, we’ll never get anywhere close to it if we can’t focus our entire attention on our goals.
If you’d care to learn more (or voice your opinion), CAC will have their next board of trustees meeting at SPACES on Mon 9/15 at 4pm. The meeting is open to the public and Gahl-Mills stated that the board would allow time for public comment. More information will be available at this meeting. The creative community is strongly encouraged to show their support for these fellowships and/or voice any concerns.
Josh Usmani is a 27 year old local artist, curator and writer. Since 2008, his work has been featured in over 50 local and regional exhibitions.
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