For First Time Ever, Cleveland’s Arts Scene Will Have Representation at City Hall

You can find it in Detroit. It exists in Nashville, along with Austin, Texas, Asheville, N.C., and definitely in New Orleans.

And pretty soon, just like in these music and arts meccas, you’ll have it in Cleveland. Maybe.

This month, the Mayor’s Office and City Council have finalized plans to create a new position and committe to better navigate Cleveland’s historically fractured arts economy. Using American Rescue Plan dollars, the city will allocate $3 million to a Transformative Public Arts Fund Program, along with at least $75,000/year for a senior strategist position to, as the job description says, “advise the mayor on arts, culture and creative economy policy.“

Both the strategist role and the arts program committee follow Mayor Bibb’s interest in bolstering arts funding on Cleveland’s long-neglected Southeast side, along with bringing minority artists more directly into the foreground.

“I can’t scream from the rooftops any louder,” Liz Maugans, the director of YARDS Projects in the Warehouse District, told Scene. “That we have a point person at the city who could look at the quality of life of Clevelanders. This is genuinely awesome.”

As for the committee, both the city and council determined its seven members in late March, dividing up the appointments equally. Gina Washington, Susie Underwood and William Washington were chosen by Mayor Bibb; Vince Robinson, Letitia Lopez and Gwen Garth, were selected by Council President Blaine Griffin; and Deidre McPherson, of the Assembly for the Arts.

The Fund committee is essentially a vetting board, deciding which community development corporation, or singular artist, or venue, or nonprofit, will receive the planned $50,000 based on a proposal. Any proposal for more than $50,000, according to a March 23rd presentation, will need both the approval of the seven-person committee along with Planning Director Joyce Huang.

The overall intention, said Ward 9 Councilman Kevin Conwell, is to ensure that dollars are doled out in an appropriate and fair manner across the whole city.

Conwell said he plans to use a portion of the Fund committee’s budget to travel to Nashville, Detroit and New York City to research each city’s strategic plans to hone  in on “lessons learned.”

From there, Conwell foresees the committee—possibly in tandem with Bibb’s arts specialist—formulating a Cleveland strategic plan. One based around amplifying current arts districts like Waterloo and Tremont. And birthing new ones.

“[It] will tell us, ‘This is what’s going on in Little Italy. This is what’s going on in Buckeye, or this is what’s going on with the Severance Hall,” Conwell said. “They got to do a strategic plan. They have to build a case and reach out to other key stakeholders so that we are moving together in concert. So I have to be like a conductor, a the conductor to make sure we’re in concert.”

Both Conwell and other arts experts interviewed for this story said that both city-level entities will be liberal with their criteria of “art.” As long as the funds are spent by 2026—per ARPA limitations—the $50,000-plus grants could be sent to muralists in Clark-Fulton, to nonprofits like the Rainey Institute on East 55th, to the Downtown Cleveland Alliance.

But where exactly to spend the dollars, some say, needs to be done smartly, not based on a fractured model decided by a few opinions.

Brent Kirby, a local musician who books “95 percent” of DCA’s street performers downtown, thinks some of the $3 million might be spent on a comprehensive data survey of Cleveland’s music scene, taking inventory of every professional, every venue, every outperforming block. It’s what Kirby said the music industry’s Remix Report did in 2010, which, at 13 years old, means “the landscape is totally changed by now.”

“I think the first step would be to create a study that would show some type of evidence of where in our music industry money is being made, how much people are making, what sector is it in?” he told Scene. “Is it in manufacturing? Is it in performance? Is it in therapy? Where do those incomes lie?”

The same goes for the visual arts sector, which has long been fractured and shrouded by Cuyahoga Arts & Culture funding drama, according to Maugans.

Maugans, the founder of Zygote Press and a multidisciplinary painter since the 1990s, told Scene that she’s long been pursuing a similar data-gathering venture.

Conceptualized as OPEN DAM (Data Artist Mapping), Maugans’ idea branches from the Cleveland Artist Registry, a sort of white pages for the working painter, designer, photographer and printmaker, backed by the Gordon Square Arts District. Better data of where artists are congregating and selling, Maugans said, would best advise the committee’s grant approvals.

And boost Cleveland in the most efficient way.

“Outside murals, public art, it’d be interesting to see music, or even another 78th Street Studios, maybe a maker space accessible to people on the East Side—or a dance studio, or whatever,” she mused.

Though Bibb is likely to decide on the specialist in late April, the committee will reconvene on June 15th to inch further to a strategy.

But Conwell said he wants more. As a jazz musician since 1974—Conwell’s office is half occupied by a vibraphone and a drum set—the councilman said he feels the committee should, with council’s approval, move in the direction of forming a permanent Department for the Arts. (The name could be different.) He wants an ordinance drafted this year or next, before 2026 deadline.

Just like Detroit has. Like Nashville. Like Austin.

“A lot of those [cities], they have the arts assembly already in place, but they need city government to help,” Conwell said. “I think that we are the missing piece of the descendant to the wheel. We got to help drive it. And we never did this before. This is new. And when you see other cities, they have a department.”

Coming soon: Cleveland Scene Daily newsletter. We’ll send you a handful of interesting Cleveland stories every morning. Subscribe now to not miss a thing.

Follow us: Google News | NewsBreak | Instagram | Facebook | Twitter

This article appears in Apr 5-19, 2023.