Cuyahoga County’s arts tax is broken into three streams of funding: operating money for arts organization, special projects (festivals, events and arts programming by non-arts groups) and the Creative Workforce Fellowships, awarded to individual artists in a variety of disciplines to allow them to focus on their work.
That last stream appeared to many to be in jeopardy when applications for 2015 grants were suspended last year. A heated, well-attended public meeting at the City Club last summer and another at SPACES in the fall attracted skeptical artists who questioned why only that stream of funding was being questioned and if it was ever likely to be reinstated.
It has been, but with some changes. Instead of 20 artists being awarded $20,000 each year, 40 artists will receive $15,000 every two years. But in keeping with the suggested mentioned by Cuyahoga Arts & Culture board members at the SPACES meeting that the artist activities be more “resident facing,” another of the fears expressed by some artists — that artists would be expected to be “social workers” — has proved true.
The description of what the fellowships fund includes a series of “public benefits” that may or may not reflect on the quality of the art. They include things like “Artists develop creative solutions, strategies and methods to address community problems,” “Residents can see themselves and their communities reflected in artists’ creative explorations,” and “Artists work in education, neighborhoods, health and human services or any number of areas of personal enrichment.”
These would seem, at least on the surface, to exclude artists whose practice is more solitary or whose art is more difficult and experiment, while favoring art that takes a more educational and social approach and more directly addresses civic, cultural and community issues.
Applications, guidelines and a workshop schedule will be available in May and the deadline is September. Artists working in all visual media, dance, music, theater and literature will be eligible for the grants which will be awarded in late 1015 for work done in 2016.