Thu 3/24 @ 1:30-5:30PM
Safe communities are often ones where arts and culture thrive, and where residents possess a sense of identity.
That theory is what the Community Partnership for Arts and Culture (CPAC) is exploring with its new speaker series “Creative Intersections.” The yearlong program features local and national speakers sharing examples of their work as partners in community. Specifically, what happens when the work of arts and culture professionals intersects with the priorities of the broader community?
The inaugural event “Building Safe Places,” which takes place Thu 3/24 at Cleveland’s Bohemian National Hall, examines how arts and culture influences justice, social ties and neighborhood development. Other speaker series dates include: “Empowering Youth” (5/19), “Bridging Divides” (7/28), “Activating Change” (9/29) and “Moving Forward” (11/17).
The speaker series fits directly into the nonprofit CPAC’s mission to serve and support arts and culture professionals and community leaders working to create a brighter future for greater Cleveland.
CoolCleveland talked to CPAC President and CEO Thomas B. Schorgl about the breadth of “Creative Intersections.”
Let’s start with the impetus behind “Creative Intersections.”
We’re focusing on safety. It’s going to be a pretty exciting group of presentations both by local and out-of-town speakers who are working in this area. We have done this with sort of ad hoc-basis speakers in the past. But this is focused on a theme. This is the first time we’ve really looked at a theme related to greater Cleveland, Cuyahoga County, and how the arts and cultural sectors are a positive factor in addressing the goals or the issues within that theme. This is something that we are interested in getting people not only from the arts and cultural sector involved in but from health and human services and community development. There are other areas we’ve worked in terms of themes around creative placemaking and the intersections between arts and culture and other community building sectors of greater Cleveland. What we want to try to illustrate is that arts and culture is an asset in the community. And as an asset it has multiple values.
Can you elaborate on those values?
One of the values that we know, based on the research we’ve done, is that within the city of Cleveland and greater Cleveland there are a number of arts and cultural organizations who are doing programming that are focused on public safety and youth development, health and human services and community development. So we want to bring that up to a higher level of awareness and understanding. And we think that doing it around a theme for a calendar year will do that. So it’s to be educational, it’s inspiring and it’s also to connect people within our community that may not know what arts and cultural organizations are doing work in this area. That’s why at the end of each of these presentations, we’re going to have a networking hour with the people who attend, as well as the speakers.
Can you talk about the selection of “Building Safe Places” speaker Barbara Schaffer Bacon, co-director of Animating Democracy, a program of Americans for the Arts?
What we’re trying to do in that arena is to show how arts and culture is important to the development of neighborhoods, and particularly when it comes to safe places to live and play and work. We’re going to show particularly through Barbara’s presentation, the evolution of creative placemaking and how nationally there are other communities involved in this and showing how arts and culture is a partner in addressing community challenges. Barbara’s background is community-based through the Americans for the Arts, which is a national service organization for local arts councils. She’s an expert when it comes to showing the connection between social justice, social equity, and has written a number of books and articles about how arts and culture can animate the democracy. So she’s going to outline and provide examples of that.
Who is your target demographic for the “Creative Intersections” speaker series?
I think it’s a lot of different folks, certainly the arts and cultural administrators and individual artists we believe will benefit from this, of all sizes of organizations. We also have done a lot of work with community development corporations, so we expect to see a number of professionals getting involved, as well as health and human service organizations, working with the arts in terms of therapies and health improvement. I think elected and appointed officials from cities and state government certainly have an interest in seeing our communities being places where safety is evident and happening. We see a broad cross-section of people attending this and getting benefit from it.
Apologies ahead of time, but initially reading CPAC led us to think of a different organization. Is there ever any confusion?
To date we have not been confused with the Conservative Political Action Committee. Many times when I’m giving talks outside of the region I use the term CPAC and I say “Not that CPAC.”
So just to confirm, Donald J. Trump won’t be canceling his appearance at any of your CPAC events?
You know, for some reason he doesn’t get in touch with me. I don’t know why.
Tickets are $25 per event or $100 for the whole series.
cultureforward.org/Creative-Intersections
Cleveland, OH 44127