Here at CoolCleveland we cover the arts & culture scene in Northeast Ohio extensively. We’re probably the most comprehensive source of information about upcoming events in this sector.
We’ve also extensively covered issues behind how the arts are supported (or not) in Northeast Ohio. Most recently, CoolCleveland reporter Bruce Checefsky has written about Cleveland’s Transformative Arts Fund, which funded seven arts projects in Cleveland with a piece of its one-time ARPA (American Rescue Plan Act) money, awarded to aid recovery after the COVID pandemic. In the last few weeks, artists have been conversing among themselves about a city plan to hire a Brooklyn-based arts collective to install statues on the downtown lakefront — a project awarded in secrecy and funded by unnamed “private” sources. Both projects have been criticized in the arts community for their lack of transparency.
But watching a July 30 City Club forum online called “What Is a Cultural Plan? Lessons from Four Cities” reinforced another longtime issue I’ve had with how the arts and culture are addressed in Northeast Ohio, an issue which either directly or indirectly involves both the aforementioned projects: its exclusively city-centricity. To me, the lesson was that a plan that stops at the borders of Cleveland is needlessly narrow and ineffective, falling far short of the boundless potential in the area’s arts and cultural community.
The City Club forum featured four panelists in a discussion moderated by the Cleveland Foundation’s Jennifer Coleman. They included Patrick Fisher from the Greater Pittsburgh Arts Council; Valerie V. Gay from Philadelphia’s Office of Arts, Culture and the Creative Economy; Nicole Mullet of ArtsNow (Summit County/Akron); and Mary McNamara Bernstein from the Rockford Area (Illinois) Arts Council.
It jumped out at me that three of the four organizations represent a region, not just a core city. The fourth represents a city — Philadelphia — with a population of 1.7 million people. Allegheny County, the area served by the Pittsburgh group, has roughly the same size population as Cuyahoga County; Summit County has around 150,000 more people than Cleveland proper. Only the Rockford area is smaller, with a population of about 340,000. But population aside, it embraces everything going on in its populated area.
Three years ago, the City of Cleveland hired Rhonda Brown as its first “arts czar”: “senior strategist for arts, culture and the creative economy.” But serving JUST Cleveland is a project that’s limited from the onset. And it’s not just the small size of the area (about 360,000) compared to the larger county (about 1.2 million): it’s the porousness of the borders. Karamu and Dobama theaters are a ten-minute drive from each other in good traffic (in lower Cleveland Heights, I’m equidistant from them). Galleries, music ensembles, and dance troupes are based and perform in Cleveland’s dense tangle of suburbs and identify as “Cleveland” organizations.
In addition, Cuyahoga County passed the tax that funds Cuyahoga Arts and Culture, and awards money to organizations throughout the county; the nonprofit Assembly for the Arts also serves the whole county. To develop a strategy to promote arts and culture in this region, make this area’s wealth of offerings better known nationally, and attract people to the area to enjoy them calls for a designated county arts leader, not a city one. (Some even advocate for regional coordination, but with an arts tax that only includes Cuyahoga County that would currently be a difficult proposition.) If Pittsburgh, Rockford and even our neighbor Akron can think and work beyond their borders, we should be able to do the same in Northeast Ohio.