Cuyahoga Artist Survey Reveals “anger, exhaustion, frustration, hopelessness, and sadness”

After a public records request, CoolCleveland obtained the report Cuyahoga Arts & Culture (CAC) commissioned for the Assembly for the Arts (Assembly) to survey individual artists for their input on how CAC distributes the funds raised by the arts and culture tax.

The report (2023 Support for Artists: Community Engagement and Planning), scheduled for release to the public on December 13, will guide the agency in making recommendations for supporting individual artists. The George Gund Foundation provided a $30,000 grant for the study, with CAC contributing an additional $20,000. ISO Arts Consulting, from Philadelphia, conducted the survey.

To gather responses, the Assembly sent mass emails and text messages to their database of 6,500+ unique recipients and 1,000 flyers distributed at community events. A field of 196 respondents completed the online survey representing 3% of the survey field. In addition, 52 participants showed up at three in-person listening sessions and a zoom meeting held in September and October.

“I would not call this a representative sample of the population of 6500,” said Tom Sutton, Ph.D., Interim Dean, Schools of Humanities & Social Sciences, and Director of Community Research Institute Baldwin Wallace University. “It is a convenience sample, not a large enough response rate to warrant being representative of the 6500 they were trying to sample.”

Convenience sampling is a method of collecting samples that are conveniently located. It is a simple and easy way to get information compared to other sampling methods. The sample, however, is not representative of the population at large. The only selection criterion for participants is that they are present and willing to participate, which limits the range of people participating while collecting data.

Not defining exactly who the population of 6500 was further questions the validity of the survey, Sutton added. “For a survey to have any kind of validity, you have to be very clear about the population sampled,” he said.

The report was commissioned following controversy when CAC did not distribute more than $1 million in individual artist grants between 2017 and 2022.  Executive director Jill Paulsen has maintained that it is the right of the agency to use funds as they deem necessary. Despite strong criticism from the community, CAC created programs already funded by local foundations, with individual grant money reportedly used for operational expenses.

The 50-page ISO report provides contractor background and research methodology, feedback from individual artists, charts and graphs, survey examples, and funding recommendations. The finding calls for the need for “restorative” action.  Artists and the arts community are increasingly angry that CAC never fully adopted the SfAPT (Cuyahoga Arts & Culture Support for Artists Planning Team) recommendations.  Instead, CAC  appears to have co-opted the recommendations for talking points divorced from the work and calls for substantive change. The ISO report supports their claims.

In 2017, the Support for Artists Planning Team (SfAPT), a group of 10 countywide artists selected by CAC, was convened to revamp the Creative Workforce Fellowship program, which came under public criticism for lack of diversity. The SfAPT included Donald Black Jr., Bryan Bowser, Gwen Garth, Letitia Lopez, Liz Maugans, Vince Robinson, Jake Sinatra, Mr. Soul, Marc White, and Jordan Wong. In December of the same year, a 12-page report, Recommended Approach To Supporting Artists In Cuyahoga County, was submitted to the CAC Board of Trustees. They received the plan, but it was never adopted.

The ISO report noted that artists across sessions expressed a wide range of emotions, including anger, exhaustion, frustration, hopelessness, and sadness related to a deep perception of disrespect by CAC. It founded that deep distrust overrides interpretations of CAC programmatic and funding choices, and that CAC’s continued silence on past actions and engagement has further eroded artist and community trust in the organization. Repair work is needed, the report made clear, but it will not occur unless CAC can own how its actions and inaction, regardless of intent, have negatively impacted local artists, especially artists of color.

Artists fatigued by the application process noted the difficulty in keeping track of when grant cycles occur across various programs throughout the city, application processes that are cumbersome and use systems that do not allow applicants to record their responses for their records, and overly burdensome budget requirements and restrictions. Recommendations include creating and maintaining one calendar for the entire grant cycle with a more streamlined and transparent grant application process, removing 501(c)(3) or fiscal sponsorship requirements and funding restrictions, and providing larger grants.

Additional recommendations in the ISO report included a shift in funding from General Operating Support to Support for Artists grants, along with an increase in the overall amount of Support for Artists grants and the amount awarded to each artist. In the ISO report, respondents requested making meaningful local artist engagement a funding requirement for flagship institutions and holding them accountable for meeting that requirement, in addition to creating unrestricted funding opportunities specifically for aging artists.

The ISO report recommends that CAC explicitly acknowledge and apologize for the strained relationship between CAC and local artists. The final report does not mention any restitution of individual grants totaling more than $1 million that went undistributed over six years. Paulsen has yet to explain what happened to the funds.

CoolCleveland reported that in April, CAC Board Member Charna Sherman, in emails obtained through a public records request, gave Paulsen explicit directions to carry over unexpended budgeted artist funding of $400K to 2019. The directive came following a scathing email by Paulsen to key constituents claiming a published article had been carelessly malicious about reporting the facts. The board approved carrying over the funds, but neither Paulsen nor the CAC staff complied.

“It is imperative that CAC explicitly acknowledge and apologize for the strained relationship between the organization and local artists,” the ISO report said. “The arts community needs this to see a clear path toward repair and reconciliation if it is to heal. If CAC will not do this, then the rest of the recommendations in this report are rendered useless.”

Although the ISO report was completed in October, the CAC decided to hold the report and release it at the CAC Board of Trustees Regular Meeting on Wednesday, December 13.

It remains unclear whether Paulsen will apologize to the artists and arts community at the next CAC board meeting or follow the recommendations outlined in the ISO report other than reinstating support for artists to pre-2017 levels. With the campaign for a new tax levy at a standstill, institutions like the Cleveland Museum of Art and Cleveland Orchestra could lose millions of dollars in public funding if the arts community and artists decide not to support CAC and vote against the levy. And individual artists still have not received funding since 2016.

In an email along with the report, Paulsen said, “We know this work will require accountability, space for healing the harms of the past, and true partnership with Assembly to ‘expand the pie’ of resources available to artists over time. CAC is taking action now based on what we heard in Assembly’s artist listening project. On December 13, CAC will recommend that its Board approve a $400K grant to the Assembly to design and manage the Support for Artists program next year. CAC and Assembly agree that we must work together to move forward.”

Jeremy V. Johnson, President and CEO of the Assembly for the Arts, added, separately, “Assembly is eager to respond and address concerns raised by the report. We will work in tandem with CAC and the community at large to expand the pie of resources for the arts and culture sector and increase equity. The report is an important next step for us to move forward.”

Bruce Checefsky is a filmmaker and photographer, and published writer. He is the recipient of three Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Awards, a Creative Workforce Fellowship, and four CEC ArtsLink Fellowships.  

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