CULTURATI by Liz Maugans: Amy Schumer’s Top Ten List for Cleveland’s Community Arts Meetings

 

Wed 9/13 @ 4PM

Amy Schumer’s Public Service Announcement


COMMENTARY and illustration by Liz Maugans

The standup comic Amy Schumer walks into a Cleveland Arts and Culture community meeting unregistered on Eventbrite and hopes there is an open bar with some arts and craft-themed cocktail.  It is unlikely and the girl working the check-in with her lanyard on sits alone with merch buttons from the organization hosting. Amy is here on a recognizance mission preparing some materials for a schtick for her next tour. 

Amy looks around and wonders where the hell are all the artists and community members — maybe they’re at $5 Sushi Wednesdays at Dave’s Supermarket? The majority in attendance are the staff and board members hosting from the looks on their name tags. She notices them strategically plopping their belongings  down at the table closest to the door. Amy eyeballs the out-of-town consultant hired from Chicago (always someone from some other city) hoping they already have a hook-up for some Ozempic locally.  

Amy scans the room and targets the expert panelists who can masterfully out-shout attendees while simultaneously showing their best resting care-face. Amy, with nails sharpened, is ready to pounce on these panelists like Don Rickles at a Friar’s Club Roast because she  knows that any moderator fears criticism from seating itself into the conversation. The folks speaking on the panels are more likely related, married to each other, were in the same sorority or fraternity or they work at one of the foundations.  Amy pops a microdose just in time for the parade of ad nauseum introductions of speakers, the Chief of Corralling Community, Director of Community Coordination, Project Manager of Community Communications, and Chief of Community Job-Title Naming. 

She’s curious why all the panelists have ear plugs in if this meeting was billed as a community listening session? She’s already irritated because she had to pay $7 to park after walking a mile from the “Burma section” of the parking lot. Amy raises her hand with visible armpit sweat showing and asks why the “public listening sessions” were being held in the middle of the work day when she finally got a mustache-waxing appointment scheduled? She’d tell the Chicago moderator in the Anne Taylor pencil skirt that if they want people to show up,  they should have meetings somewhere fun— like Cedar Point. 

In the first five minutes of this meeting, Schumer has all the material she needs. The hosting staff are paraded out one by one as they each mumble the info from the PowerPoint verbatim, with typical asks like, donate money here, be a member of our team or updating the crowd about future snore meetings just like this one. She grabs her purse and diaphragm as they continue to drone-thank every person in the room for showing up to eat the deli tray spread  from Giant Eagle (another $20 included in the ticket).

Amy Schumer took the bull by the horns and drafted a Top Ten List of reasons to improve Arts and Cultural Meetings in Cleveland (inspired by David Letterman Top Ten Lists). Disclosure *Amy hopes that more artists and community members will participate in future meetings, and arts and cultural organizations hosting will change these meetings to be more effective in building relationships and giving artists and the community members agency. 

Amy Schumer Top Ten List

How to do an Arts and Cultural Meeting in Cleveland

10. To avoid  “performative check boxing meetings” — Zoom naked instead. 

9. If the elephant in the room is why the meeting is happening — avoid it at all costs and talk about “public benefits” or some other vague mumbo-jumbo. 

8. Communicate like you are sexting a drunk booty-call to LeBron James. No clear agenda. Just get his Insta and stalk him via Survey Monkey. 

7. Invite as many panelists with “chief” in their names so the room smells like potpourri cronyism. 

6. Charge as much as you can for these meetings because you don’t want people to come back. This includes warm pop. Make the seats as uncomfortable as possible so people leave early. Charge as much as getting into the Cleveland Museum of Art. Oops, scratch that, the museum is free.

5. Keep those attending hypnotized because decision makers don’t really need artists’ help, but they surely don’t want artists to interfere either. 

4. Create PowerPoint presentations with art-speak jargon and language that is incomprehensible with as many acronyms as possible LOL.

3. Dedicate the least amount of  time for break-out discussions and avoid complex and difficult issues, and if they arise, anecdotally change the conversation to the last Cleveland Browns game.

2. Artists who sign up for “public comment” should never be responded to. It’s fun to make them look ridiculous talking to the air.  

1. Don’t invest in any gathering afterwards at a bar or restaurant close by because networking artists always spells trouble.

Amy Schumer understands that the fall season of Arts and Culture meetings are in full swing. She sees the op-ed pieces by NEO cultural leaders that are coming out, but she can’t read them because of the paywalls. She knows the pressure is on to respond to the tax levy that is ready to expire for funding the arts in Cuyahoga County. It could mean millions of lost income and job cuts across this region. All artists and community members should care and feel involved and heard at forthcoming meetings. Amy gets it. This is her badass Public Service Announcement.

Amy wonders how we can authentically build an arts and cultural base for these future efforts if  meetings like these continue. Amy is a true believer that engaging the artists and residents of this region is participatory if we do this together. Amy says, “No time like the present to change — and where can I get that Ozempic?”

The community is invited to the next Cuyahoga Arts & Culture Community Meeting on Wednesday, September 13 at 4pm at the Cleveland Public Library Louis Stokes Wing, 2nd Floor, Conference Room B, 325 Superior Avenue, Cleveland, OH 44114. Save a seat for Amy.

 

Liz Maugans is a Cleveland-based artist, mom of three great kids, a social justice advocate, an educator, a gallerist, and curator. Maugans co-founded Zygote Press, the Collective Arts Network, the  Cleveland Artist Registry and the Artist Bridge Coalition. Currently, Maugans is the Chief Curator of the Dalad Collection and Director of Yards Projects at Worthington Yards. Maugans teaches Artist-in-Communities and Museums and Collections at Cleveland State University and is Chief of Community Engagement at Art Everyspace. Maugans sits on the Board of the Collective Arts Network and Refresh Collective. Her work is represented by Hedge Gallery at 78th Street Studios. https://www.lizmaugansart.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cleveland, OH 44114

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