My last few months have been difficult. With the presidential debate and upcoming election, I am fraught with fear. To calm my nerves, a kumbaya highlight for me has been hanging out with a fun and active group of creative people who are collaboratively building a festival. It is open to all who want to join in. Quest for the Fest is akin to the inventors of jello, a pick-up basketball game, swimming at the city pool, a NASA control room, and a Buc-Cees shopping experience — all at once.
I also entertained myself this summer by listening to podcasts and reading some good books. I desperately needed less stem and more bloom. These podcasters, authors and creative thinkers made me feel like we were on the same wavelength, experiencing similar vibes in counterculture. I felt uplifted by their philosophies and concepts. I supplied a recommended list at the end of this writing. Through a piecemeal, hodgepodge, rainbow soft-swirl approach, I incorporated the wellspring of their ideas with the opportunities that are possible here on the North Coast into Quest for the Fest to soothe my exhausted soul.
Here is a mash-up of their borrowed and repurposed ideas spinning in my orbit. I was going for aspirational.
In a book by Musa Al-Gharbi called We Have Never Been Woke: Social Justice Discourse, Inequality, and the Rise of a New Elite, Al-Gharbi believes that people (educated progressives) who often gain power and status to help the most vulnerable do just the opposite by disguising themselves as vulnerable too, something the cultural leadership in NEO should avoid. These progressive elites are referred to in the book as symbolic capitalists, professional managerial class, class X, or the Bourgeois Bohemians.
The elite constellation of civic curators think of themselves as egalitarians. Al-Gharbi cites that progressives are attracted to and are byproducts of universities. Many are from elite universities like Harvard, Yale, Kenyon, Oberlin, Case Western Reserve University, Miami University, George Washington University, and Cornell. They manage the moves and messaging by playing their cards close to the chest.
The pedigree and advancement of these cultural elites stem from relatively advantaged backgrounds. The contradiction is that the majority of these cultural elites pose as anti-elitists. They try to prove that their jobs and decisions are not based on privilege while pretending that they understand those who are disadvantaged. More often than not, decisions made by cultural elites harm those they wish to support.
The cultural leaders who come from elite schools present as if they are anti-privileged. Those who are most educated have little understanding of the needs of the people doing the work. That means it has the possibility of happening in the arts and culture community too. An alternative model of projecting a spirit that we are all in together is with the collaborative maker spaces like Zygote Press, Praxis Fiber Workshop, Morgan Conservatory, Cleveland Print Room, Red Lion Tattoos, Future Ink Graphics and many others. They attract communities that roam like buffalo together and graze on the big-possibility thinking that offers a different prism to neighborhoods across Cleveland. Working together in collaboration is an uphill battle. Investing in the creative economy and looking at our creative community like private equity firms, these elites could benefit from including creatives in the decisions instead of thinking they know what is best for us. Creatives are tired of predetermined and prescriptive agendas of the cultural elite.
The cultural elite’s outsized, self-important busy work moves them further from their awareness of what artists and creatives are doing. Their reliance on static data stagnates and distances them even more. The cultural elites remain in their buffer zones with no oversight or accountability. Who evaluates them?
Power is where the money is, and creatives desperately need support. They can better serve the community with support! The cultural elite get cozy, travel to other cities that they want Cleveland to emulate and return to their boardrooms to further distance themselves in their respective headspaces. The optics for cultural elite success (which their privilege is still unconscious of) is the recognition of awards they continue to add to their shelves from places like Crain’s Business, the City Club, or Cleveland Magazine. The cultural elite continue to detach from those they serve by hiring expensive, out-of-town consultants who tell them what they want to hear because they are paid handsomely. This is the norm rather than involving (and paying) creatives directly for their insight, skills, feedback, involvement, and strategic efforts moving forward. Is it equally hard to approach generative cultural and collective community-building? Hell yeah! We are the stakeholders in this mission.
Each year, the cultural elites create a new buzzword to cheer on their top-down projects, something like “transformative”. For example, the City of Cleveland’s Transformative Arts Fund is an example of an ARPA fund gone wild with what could have made a social and cultural transformation for thousands of creatives in Cuyahoga County after the pandemic. Creatives could have been participants from ideation to execution. Instead, the sincere and well-intentioned cultural elites shape-shifted this project and perpetuated the very same inequalities they decry. This was a missed opportunity to engage, increase connection and strengthen bonds between everyone through transparency and communal power.
We need more grace and compassion from our cultural elites without all this bunker sensibility. In her book Small Victories, author Anne Lamott writes, “Grace means being in another universe from where you were stuck.” The cultural elites hold on to their comfort, not recognizing the discomfort for those they believe they serve. They do not find the time to get to know artists. As the cultural elite gain muscle, the scarcity narratives kick-in with fear tactics, consistently and repeatedly talking about the rationing of arts budgets, declining cigarette revenues, fewer resources, and deficit thinking. The cultural elites are hijacking General Operating Support for artists and turning it into administrative project support grants that exhaust creatives with a short supply of resources, meager grants, and over-anticipated expectations on what they are able to deliver. This type of thinking is a kill-joy dead end.
This nation is at the threshold of technological and climate disruption. Everything for everyone will change. We are experiencing epidemic levels of loneliness and isolation. We need a cultural road map here, created holistically, with a vision for this region that serves its people morally, economically and diplomatically. NEO creatives are abundant instruments of change. Artists have this internal love doctrine that serves our community, no different from Cleveland Public Power or the beautiful Lake Erie, with the social notion of fairness at the center. There are so many opportunities for the cultural elites to source creatives with mutual support, respect and collaboration, which includes reciprocity and participation at all levels of decision-making.
We need to help creatives build a high-functioning community together. It is a solution culture where relationships are built by adapting this spirit of collaboration that becomes second nature to how we move forward. We desperately need bridge people who understand the richness of us with a capital US.
The titans of cultural leadership must know that people are our greatest assets. We should tap into our cultural makers and community, like when the Great Lakes Brewing Company releases a new IPA beer. We cannot do this by adapting to the standards of other cities, so let us do it together, Cleveland-style.
Recommended list!
Musa AL-Gharbi: We Have Never Been Woke https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691232607/we-have-never-been-woke
Anne Lamott: Small Victories https://www.amazon.com/Small-Victories-Spotting-Improbable-Moments/dp/1594486298
On Being Podcast, Krista Tippet with Nick Offerman https://onbeing.org/programs/nick-offerman-working-with-wood-and-the-meaning-of-life/
One Response to “CULTURATI: Cleveland Kumbaya by Liz Maugans”
Liz Maugans
A quick correction on the Transformative Arys Fund that was designed for supporting rescue money for creatives, creative businesses or collectives in Cleveland not Cuyahoga County. My bad. Content still applies!