Artist and community activist Liz Maugans has attended most of the recent community meetings on arts funding, and she called for action in a recent email sent to artists in Cuyahoga County.
Maugans is a visual artist who co-founded Zygote Press, the Collective Arts Network, the Cleveland Artist Registry, and the Artist Bridge Coalition, and is director of Yards Projects at Worthington Yards and placed second for Best Community Activist in Scene’s Best of Cleveland 2023. She also writes the CULTURATI column for CoolCleveland.
She sent an email to her artist’s contacts and included the email addresses of Cuyahoga Arts and Culture (CAC) board: president Nancy Mendez, vice president Michele Scott Taylor, Daniel Blakemore, Karolyn Isenhart, and Charna Sherman. Cuyahoga County Chief of Communication and Strategy David Razum was also on her list. She said she was “shocked and appalled” at the lack of transparency by the CAC Board and staff at the September 13 meeting.
“I long ago lost confidence in [CAC Executive Director] Jill Paulsen, especially after she maligned the artist community for complaining — accurately! — that hundreds of thousands of dollars the Board budgeted for artist programming were secretly not spent or even rolled over as the Board had directed,” Maugans said in her email, “Chris Ronayne is also partly to blame as artists have recommended working-class ARTISTS (what a concept) to fill the vacant CAC Board seats in 2023, and those artists were never even contacted. Instead, Ronayne went with Jill’s recommendations, and here we are. NO artists are sitting on the CAC board.”
Maugans offered artists the option to use a letter she drafted, which asked CAC Board Members and County Executive Ronayne for “full and comprehensive information to the community about spending options in advance of the possible new levy” and demanded that “members of the arts sector be afforded a meaningful opportunity to share their views on that information and the various options sufficiently before a recommendation is made to the Board in November to vote on when it will be too late.” Current cigarette tax funding will expire, and a new levy and campaign is on the horizon.
She ended, asking, “Why would we want another ten years of this broken, dysfunctional Board to tell us what is best for the arts and creative workforce in this county?”
As a full disclosure, I signed my name and sent a letter to the email addresses provided. So did many other artists and cultural workers. Less than a week later, Charna Sherman responded with her email, saying that CAC’s lack of transparency would jeopardize a campaign for a new levy.
Dear Artists who have written me, the rest of the CAC Board, and the County Executive:
Thank you so very much for making the effort to communicate your views. I trust you know that I share them and have attempted repeatedly – but thus far unsuccessfully — to convey and advocate for them to my sister CAC Board members. I fear that CAC’s demonstrable lack of transparency (both by our ED and the Board), the Board’s recent decision as to how to spend our funds in the next two years (which I opposed), and our far-too-bloated operational expenses will jeopardize a critical campaign to replenish our funds through a new levy. Only your continued advocacy and that of others can make a difference at this late hour in the process.
Sincerely, Charna Sherman, CAC Board Member
Five days after her email, cleveland.com ran a story about equity advocate Chinenye “ChiChi” Nkemere, who was elected to a two-year term to succeed philanthropist and arts entrepreneur Fred Bidwell as chair of the 23-member Assembly for the Arts. Bidwell, who joined as president in June 2021, explained in an email exchange and phone interview with CoolCleveland that the change of leadership at the Assembly for the Arts was coincidental and had nothing to do with his public criticism of the CAC board meeting. Despite the optics, there is little reason to doubt him.
“When I agreed to be the founding board chair of the Assembly, I made it clear that I would step aside from the chair after the first two years. I am delighted that this plan was realized on time and as planned. The board of the Assembly is one of the most diverse and committed in Cleveland, and it is an important statement to the community that it is now led by a dynamic young black woman,” said Bidwell, who will retain the post of Chair of the Board of the Assembly for Action, the affiliated 501(c)4 that will lead the campaign to renew the cigarette tax.
In that role, Bidwell is at the center of advocacy for a new tax levy expected to be on the ballot in November 2024. As Chair of the Board of the Assembly for Action, he will be responsible, in part, for raising the nearly $1.5 million needed for the campaign. He is well aware of the short timeline. Despite recommendations from a consultant, CAC Executive Director Jill Paulsen has yet to announce a campaign date or strategy. Time is running out for her. Voting takes place in just thirteen months.
Assembly for the Arts is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization that operates in close partnership with Cuyahoga Arts & Culture, a government agency, and Assembly for Action, a 501(c)4 political action nonprofit to serve the entire creative sector.
“It is difficult to build support for a ballot campaign, which is an expensive proposition and requires broad support from the community, where there are transparency issues,” Bidwell said when asked about his public comments following the September 13 CAC board meeting and affirmative vote. “The community never had a chance to see the funding options brought up in the meeting, particularly any of the direct stakeholders.”
Bidwell said he was surprised by the vote and decision made by the CAC board. Funding is critical, and if a levy does not get renewed and funding is lost, the results would be devastating to the cultural community. He remains committed to the tax renewal and to getting a successful campaign in 2024 but finds it hard to do so with questions and criticism swirling around from the community.
“The definition of democracy is that you have a discussion,” he said. “It is difficult to have voters and funders for a campaign if their voices are not heard. I want to be constructive, not destructive, but sometimes these things need to be said.”
As for individual artists, Bidwell thinks funding in recent years has not been significant and does not empower people to have sustainable careers.
“There has been a lot of concern about funding for individual artists. It is a very small portion of the total funding, but there is an argument that more money should be allocated to individual artists, a segment that has been the hardest hit,” he said.
According to Bidwell, the nonprofit community needs predictability from the CAC while planning their programs five years out and is open to rethinking how the funds get distributed. So far, the CAC has not provided it.
“Nobody wants conflict and criticism in the art community. Artists, arts administrators, and creative professionals support each other. We are pulling for the same goal, and to get successful campaign in 2024, we need to address those issues,” he said, ending the CoolCleveland interview with, ”Thanks for your interest in this.”
