Blog

Apr 26, 2024

NE Ohio needs art in every aspect of civic life to thrive

Jennifer Coleman is program director, Creative Culture and Arts, for the George Gund Foundation. Cleveland is a city with a bounty of diverse arts and cultural organizations and institutions. We boast

Jennifer Coleman is program director, Creative Culture and Arts, for the George Gund Foundation.

Cleveland is a city with a bounty of diverse arts and cultural organizations and institutions. We boast organizations that range from newly formed to those celebrating their centennial anniversaries. It's an established fact that we "punch well above our weight" in arts offerings compared to cities of similar population size.

We have a vibrant and growing community of talented artists who seek to positively impact our community through the expression of their creativity in multiple forms. Our local foundations are committed to ensuring that Cleveland remains a vibrant, arts-rich city and our support of art organizations and artists through the dedicated county tax is admired and envied by many cities wishing to do the same.

But as every creative knows, resting on one's laurels breeds complacency. There is work to do to maintain and grow our vibrancy and make Greater Cleveland a more desirable place to live, growing our creative workforce, catalyzing development in our neighborhoods and serving as a bridge between various segments of the community.

Because of the richness of our local art offerings, we tend as a community to focus on the final product — the inspiring plays, beautiful paintings, engaging museums and galleries. But that has resulted in Cleveland's arts community being placed into an aesthetic silo: valued but separated from other aspects of community affairs other than beautification efforts.

The process of art making involves critical thought and project management — skills that are transferable to helping solve some of our most challenging civic issues. The arts can open alternate paths of communication, finding commonalities between different points of view where conflict previously existed. But that may change, as the City of Cleveland recently hired Rhonda Brown, the first senior strategist of arts, culture and creative economy. This position has the exciting task of truly integrating art and creative thought into the engine of City Hall.

Other cities have incorporated programs to imbed artists into city departments, to engage staff in examining departmental practices in new and unexpected ways. The city of Minneapolis' Creative CityMaking initiative envisioned the arts as an important tool to create a more responsive government that imagined new ways of working, and building new channels of engagement with the community to initiate change in how the city functions. Local artists worked in departments including Regulatory Services to amplify city tenant's needs; Information Technology to expand digital equity initiatives and the City Clerk's Office to increase voter engagement.

The city of Seattle's Beloved project is an anti-gun violence campaign linking the community, the Office of Arts & Culture, and King County's Zero Youth Detention/Public Health team. Beloved taps local creative talent to bring into focus the systemic causes of community-based gun violence and amplify the voices of those working on treatments and prevention.

Weaving arts and culture and economic development policies together holds tremendous potential to move the needle in strengthening the fabric of Greater Cleveland.

Affordable housing is an issue that has impacted creatives being displaced out of rapidly developing neighborhoods that artists initially helped make attractive. Artists and art organizations are important stakeholders that need to be involved in the development of new affordable housing policies.

Seattle has created Arts & Cultural Districts, dedicated to nurturing and protecting the presence of arts and culture in neighborhoods. These new standards have been shown to increase walkability, vitality and regional focus. The city's mission in creating these districts is to ensure that the organizations and individuals that give these unique neighborhoods their verve remain healthy and vibrant for future generations.

We at the George Gund Foundation value the integral role that arts and culture play in making Cleveland an intriguing, welcoming and exceptional place to live. Artistic expression in its many forms helps us make sense of our world and broaden our experience and understanding of it.

Cleveland is at an exciting juncture where we can finally begin to integrate the rich, creative thought processes that make our art community so vibrant into the policies that the city, and hopefully the county, is implementing to improve our region.