CoolCleveland conducted an exclusive interview with Assembly for the Arts President and CEO Jeremy Johnson last week to better understand the confusing rollout of artist funding for 2024, the relationship of Assembly to the Cuyahoga Arts and Culture (CAC), and learn whether any progress had been made in ending the pause to the arts levy ballot campaign to continue public funding for the arts agency.
Johnson has used a variety of stump speeches to promote his message, repeating the need for equity by invoking the three-legged stool metaphor or using “expanding the pie” terminology to describe what many claim is a lackluster vision for the agency, created for the purpose of providing unrestricted grants to individual artists.
Formerly executive director of Newark Arts before coming to Cleveland, Johnson was hired as president and CEO of Assembly for the Arts in 2021. He grew up in the Hough and Glenville neighborhoods and attended University School on a scholarship before heading to college; his hiring was considered a homecoming for the career arts administrator. He was paid $100,325 at the time of his appointment.
Assembly is funded, in part, by CAC, and works closely with the agency to administer funding to individual artists. Assembly for Action, the sister organization, is responsible for raising the $1.5 million, or more, needed to launch a ballot campaign and organize grassroots support for renewing the cigarette tax before the current tax expires on January 1, 2027.
Fred Bidwell, board chair of the Assembly for Action, said in an op-ed last November in the Plain Dealer that he doesn’t see a path for successfully launching this campaign “given the current atmosphere of confusion and mistrust in Cuyahoga Arts and Culture (CAC). Bidwell suggested a pause in the campaign and has not spoken publicly about whether the Assembly for Action will move forward or when.
A report from ISO Arts Consulting, funded in part by the Gund Foundation, revealed an artist community expressing anger, exhaustion, frustration, hopelessness, and sadness related to the disrespect shown by CAC.
Jennifer Coleman, program director of Creative Culture and Arts for the George Gund Foundation, said in an op-ed published in the Plain Dealer in December that Cuyahoga County must find a sustainable public arts funding tax strategy that might “evolve into multiple streams of funding, from taxation, government, corporate, and new philanthropic players over time,” while adding that local philanthropy is ready to assist in supporting this work.
The CAC board voted in December to approve $400,000 to the Assembly to manage the Support for Artists program for 2024, adding another $100,000 after board president Nancy Mendez acknowledged that CAC had not paid out grants to individual artists in 2018 and 2019 and again in 2021. The additional money gives Johnson $500,000 for individual artists and artist support programs.
Most of the available funds are restricted grants for programs designed by four pass-through or regranting institutions that include SPACES, Cleveland Public Theater, Julia De Burgos Cultural Arts Center, and Karamu House, with administrative costs totaling $120,000, incurred by both Assembly and the regranting organizations, will be deducted from the total, leaving the artists with even less money. Johnson did say the additional $100,000, which was unexpected, will have no administrative overhead, and artists could expect unrestricted grants ranging from $8,000 to $10,000.
He plans to create a paid artist advisory committee to help determine how to distribute grant money. Information will be available on the Assembly website by the end of January at assemblycle.org.
Rather than give Assembly the entire $500,000 to distribute directly to artists without adding layers of administration — the reason for the nonprofit in the first place — CAC voted, behind closed doors and without public input, to structure the artist support program by adding the regranting institutions. Johnson agreed with their decision.
Three of the four organizations are located less than a few miles from each other in a county of more than 450 square miles with a population of 1.25 million. SPACES and Cleveland Public Theater are on Detroit Ave., and Julia De Burgos Cultural Arts Center is nearby. Karamu House, in the Fairfax neighborhood on the East Side of Cleveland, received $575,000 in artist project support over five years. Artists without a relationship with these small groups of organizations usually miss out on the opportunity for funding.
Johnson said that he made the decision to fund the same four organizations in 2024 as based on a review of their performance from previous years. Assembly never released a call for applications from the many countywide 501(c)3 nonprofits that might have been interested in the program, nor did he solicit proposals.
“The more pass-through organizations [other than SPACES, Cleveland Public Theater, Julia De Burgos Cultural Arts Center, and Karamu House] means more layers. We have not issued a call for applications,” he said. “We do not want to create layers of middlemen between the dollars and individual artists. We are not trying to create more pass-through organizations.”
But he did exactly that by inviting SPACES, Cleveland Public Theater, Julia de Burgos, and Karamu House, as middlemen, adding another layer of administration that drains money away from the artists.
Assembly will control issuing the checks going out to artists, whether in partnership with other organizations or unrestricted, suggesting that centralizing the process could reduce costs. Not so, according to Johnson; administrative fees will remain the same.
Artists have been critical of the artist support program managed by the pass-through or regranting organizations, saying the creative process is limited to thematic, pay-to-play programming that does not support their work but is instead used to promote the CAC and Assembly social and political agendas and the programmatic agendas of the participating organizations. Artists pay for their own art supplies and production costs. Money for basic living costs like housing, health care, and transportation is minimized.
Karamu House recently announced that seventeen local artists will receive awards in 2024 through the Room in the House Fellowship (RITH). The awards are meant to “empower artists’ creative practice through a $5,000 financial award, digital exhibition presence, and space at Karamu for creation, exhibition, and performance. Applications for the fellowship were open to Cuyahoga County-based artists with a demonstrated commitment to their visual arts or performance-based work and alignment to Karamu’s vision of socially and culturally responsive art that celebrates the Black experience,” according to their website.
SPACES will offer $4,000 in awards to 12 artists and collectives for project-based support through the Urgent Art Fund, which supports production expenses and artist commissions that are socially, politically, or culturally responsive. Julia De Burgos Cultural Arts Center plans to give ten $5,000 artist grants with preference to projects that support and celebrate the Latino/a/x and Hispanic communities of Cuyahoga County.
CAC invited Cleveland Public Theater (CPT) to apply for artist support funding in 2019, which they received in 2020. But a year later, they were told the program had ended. CPT did not get invited back until recently.
Johnson said he is in contact with Bidwell over the levy campaign and is closing in on the field of contributors. An announcement could be made following the April Assembly for Action quarterly meeting.
“We continue to work on raising money. We are paying consultants. I think you could look forward to something after our meeting,” he said. “We do need to heal, but we also need to raise money. The wheels are turning. We are still meeting with people.”
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.
5 Responses to “Assembly For the Arts’ Jeremy Johnson Talks to CoolCleveland”
Thomas
On 01/10/24 at 12:51PM, CoolCleveland received the following message from Malisssa K. Bodmann:
Thanks for speaking with Jeremy last week. We reviewed the article, and there are some errors we hope you will correct.
1. Assembly was not created solely to fund individual artists. From the May 2021 press release, Assembly was formed to “provide a unified voice, set regional goals, and represent shared priorities for the creative economy in Northeast Ohio.” https://assemblycle.org/new-arts-alliance-will-give-united-voice-to-northeast-ohios-arts-community/
2. CAC did not vote behind closed doors to continue with the same “regranting” organizations in 2024 nor did it do so without public input. CAC is contracting with Assembly to manage and deploy the entirety of the $500,000. Assembly reached out to the returning partner organizations as a matter of due process, including the artist listening sessions. There was no behind-closed-doors vote associated with Assembly’s working with the partners.
3. CAC’s board approved and the agency distributed artist funding in 2019 ($476,465) and 2021 ($260,000).
Please let me know if you have questions. We appreciate your consideration of these requested corrections.
-Malissa K. Bodmann
Thomas
On 01/10/24 at 12:52PM, CoolCleveland received the following message from Jill Paulsen:
I’m writing to ask you to issue a correction on a recent Cool Cleveland article.
The accusation that CAC’s board met in private and voted in private is false. As a public body, CAC conducts all its business in public. No such private meeting occurred.
CC Article, Bruce C.
“Rather than give Assembly the entire $500,000 to distribute directly to artists without adding layers of administration — the reason for the nonprofit in the first place — CAC voted, behind closed doors and without public input, to structure the artist support program by adding the regranting institutions. Johnson agreed with their decision.”
Thank you for addressing this issue.
Best, Jill
Executive Director, Cuyahoga Arts & Culture
Bruce Checefsky
At the December meeting, CAC Board president Nancy Mendez acknowledged that CAC had not paid out grants to individual artists totaling more than $400,000 in 2018 and 2019. Mendez said the artist’s money was “put into the general operating support.” Board member Charna Sherman added, “Then we cheated them out of another $140,000 in the December 2021 board meeting.”
Johnson told CoolCleveland that CAC voted on the four funding scenarios and selected option four. When asked to clarify that the board voted for option four, he answered “correct.”
There was never an opportunity for the public to review the four options or discuss which scenario was preferable. The vote took place after the meeting. CoolCleveland is requesting records to review the process.
Liz Maugans
What CAC and Assembly dont do and could be appreciated is if these agencies just acknowledge that this is an interim year and they are giving it to these four orgs (again) until an equitable process and policy for other organizations to apply is developed- which could include other orgs that support artists and communities of color. BOOM! Simple and clear.
This wall of containment continues and the public not getting a straight answer fuels the opaqueness of their work. I was at the CAC board meeting and these four scenarios were not brought up at all! One was selected by the CAC, but it was never voted upon or discussed in open meetings- why? It’s an opportunity for the agencies to air out where they are at with this transition. It provides the public participation in listening to the reasoning why these four orgs are the chosen ones. In open dialogue.
Countless organizations serve artists and communities of color and would potentially want to participate in this pass through partnership with Assembly. Many don’t know that these pass throughs even exist. This is the opposite of equitable when a narrow group of organizations are selected by some nefarious person or persons and continually decide upon a chosen few! (All the current organizations do fabulous work but so do other organizations) so what gives?
What is the equitable policy for being a pass through partner to CAC or Assembly? Where is the annual open call to participate? What is the criteria to be a pass through partner? Who chooses? When will they determine this ?
Artists have been at these meetings asking these questions for years! Is there a process? Name it and throw it up on your website so organizations understand and know how to participate! They could see if they are eligible based on whatever the current ambiguous criteria is? Declare it.
It’s getting to be like a Saturday Night Live skit how clarifying something so simple turns into a patronizing commentary from these agency’s publicist and the CAC’s defensive Executive Director instead of clarifying when , who, and why these decisions of pass through partnerships are being made to pass out grants to artists.
Let’s hope these grants are unrestricted to artists even though their are certain criteria listed on the pass through partners websites for artists to get them.
Will Sanchez
Artists or the arts culture have been the catalyst of the gentrification process since the beginning of civilization. Today we base redevelopment plans upon it, just look at many of the Cleveland neighborhoods economic strategies implemented to help their communities. Without artists, all this political meandering is pointless.
It’s those organizations that need us. The campaign is for our support, but the NFP benefit with lucrative administration fees before they even do an outreach to us. Every grant, funding, program or project applied for by them is based on us. Yet, they create nothing, no value and want our gratitude for a pittance. As if we are children that need our hands held.
We will not support more schemes of middlemen or social agendas while we struggle.