Serpil Sevgen is a Turkish school counselor and artist who uses the arts as a tool in her counseling work with youth in Istanbul.  Serpil is another of the foundation’s Creative Fusion artists and she has brought both her counseling and her artistic skills here to work with the dedicated young people in Young Audiences’ summer ArtWorks program.

Serpil’s specialty is in the ancient Turkish tradition of paper marbling – painting on water and transferring the design to paper or fabric.  (Think of all the beautiful marble-like or feather designs inside linings of old book covers – or on the Kleenex box sitting on my desk at work.) 

It was not clear at first if Serpil would be able to come.  Her employers – the government of Turkey, which runs the national education system – did not fully understand the value of her work and why an American organization would want to use her services.  They did not immediately grant her permission to leave.

Serpil had to take one of the officials from the Ministry of Education with her on a trip to Spain, where she was demonstrating her technique.  After observing her engagement with students, the official understood the unique approach Serpil takes in helping young people discover things about themselves while learning this mesmerizing and challenging art form.  Permission was granted and Serpil now has a friend in the Ministry of Education.

I observed several of Serpil’s classes in the big tent on Wade Oval that houses Young Audiences’ program  She begins with games that help her students begin to think about aspects of themselves – how they relate in groups, what their ambitions are for themselves – what their personal philosophy of life might be.  With this as a foundation, she introduces the delicate and quiet approach needed to engage with the art form.  She explains the special water and natural chemical mix that will hold paint in suspension on its surface, the tools – simple brushes made of horsehair or straw, combs, sticks.  And then she demonstrates how to hold your body steady, focus and release the paint onto the surface of the water.

Each design is unique to the person making it and can never be repeated.  She encourages each student to think about what the colors mean to them and to think carefully about every color and every delicate stroke they make to energize the paint into a flowing design.

It is like magic when the paper is laid on the water and then pulled slowing out, transferring the design to the paper and leaving the water a clean canvas for the next student.  See examples of their work below.

Each member of the class watches intently, learning from the work of his or her predecessor.  It was so interesting to see how focused, quiet and serious the students were – and how they appreciated each others’ work.  When I asked what one student noticed about her first try at this new art form she said, “I was nervous, but it was so peaceful.  I didn’t think about anything else.  My mind was completely calm. I don’t ever remember anything ever being that quiet for me before.” 

Click below to see photos:

I just returned from a very meaty and reflective meeting on the role of evaluation in philanthropy (NOT as dry a subject as it may sound!). 

It was organized by the Evaluation Roundtable, a program of the Foundation Center to improve philanthropy. The Roundtable was held in Baltimore, at the Annie E. Casey Foundation, headquartered there.  Thought leaders in the field presented a number of rich discussion topics, including a first look at the history of the uses of evaluation by charitable foundations – a history that goes back only to the 1980’s, in terms of dedicated staff and evaluation units within foundations. 

Within this 30-year span, four distinct ‘eras’ were identified – a lot of evolution and change in such a short period of time.  The progression through these eras shows how evaluation has moved from being used by funders as simply an after-the-fact research tool to prove what worked and what didn’t within stand-alone projects. It’s current role is more of an ongoing tool for strategy development, learning and to measure the impact of the pro-active work of foundations – often over decades-long programs and initiatives. 

The titles given to evaluation staff and units is telling in this regard.  In the ‘80’s it was “Research and Evaluation.”  Today it’s more often “Organizational Learning and Evaluation.”

There was a lot of discussion at the Roundtable about the natural tensions between evaluation to prove an idea or theory, and evaluation for learning and improving performance over time.  Foundation boards, in their important fiduciary and oversight role, want proof of impact and accountability for the use of resources. Program staff tends to seek learning from evaluation in order to be more effective in their work.

The discussion surfaced an important shift in intent for the proactive work of foundations that deeply affects evaluation as well.  Foundations are becoming more aware that they cannot, by the sole virtue of their grantmaking, solve entrenched social problems.   Rather, the challenge is to better understand the root causes of problems and develop strategic approaches to address these causes.  Here, evaluation as a learning tool and a strategy development tool is key, and long-term initiative frameworks must be flexible enough to adjust to learning as it is acquired.

Most pro-active and strategic grantmaking within foundations begins with a Theory of Change.  This is a term of art for a framework that offers a rationale for the initiative, identifies the inputs and strategies that will be employed to effect the change that is desired, and a clear understanding of the outcomes that will demonstrate success.  Too many Theories of Change have expectations that go beyond the power of a single funder to effect.  Too many are fuzzy on the strategies/actions required to make change.  And too few have clear outcome measures that will show whether the work is being successful. 

The Roundtable surfaced many, many valuable lessons.  I’ll note just two here.
1. A Theory of Change must be:

• Plausible (realistic in their expectations for success)
• Do-able (enough management capacity and strategies that have a good chance of being implemented)
• Knowable (clear and measurable success indicators at specific steps a long the way).  You can’t evaluate what you can’t measure. 

2. Although funders never intend to do harm with their initiatives, any effort to make change at the systemic level will always involve winners and losers.  Funders (or other actors) must decide what constitutes harm and have good reasons for acting to make change that may not be perceived as beneficial to all who are affected.

Finally, to sum up my experience of the Roundtable, I’d like to paraphrase a saying that was coined by the Kentucky Arts Council (Art is not a Thing; it is a Way). Evaluation is not a “thing” you do once when a project is over.  It is a way of continuous learning within organizations wishing to do well and do good.

That’s what Lily Yeh said about fighting her fears and taking on the challenge of transforming a distressed Philadelphia neighborhood – and the lives of the distressed and forgotten people who lived there. 

Lily Yeh is an artist who has worked most of her life to create an alternative world for others from the broken landscapes of the inner city. Her keynote address at the Cleveland Foundation’s Annual Meeting this year was inspiring and filled with more wisdom than a PBS transformative awareness special during pledge week:

 “Life breaks us so we have the opportunity to re-make ourselves.”

 “We grow our roots in the darkness where we failed.”

 “To heal, one must look at the place that hurts.”

 “The most challenged place is the one most ready for transformation.”

While we may have heard these or similar aphorisms before, they transmitted deep and powerful truth from a woman whose life has clearly been lived for others and who has found incredible joy and reward in the process.  You had to pay attention.

After her keynote, Ms. Yeh stayed in Cleveland to offer a workshop for local grass-roots community workers and artists the next day.  Participants came by invitation from the Foundation’s Neighborhood Connections small grants program – and boy, did they come!  Registration was capped at 150 and by my count there were more than 100 that showed up on a very rainy day at the neighborhood Senior Center at East 79th and Quincy.

Lily had said the day before that “Community building is very slow and sloppy” but things were far from slow and amazingly well ordered throughout the five hour workshop.  It was quite a sight to see 100+ people of all ages, diversities and experience working together by neighborhood (more than 15 Cleveland neighborhoods were represented). 

Lily offered a model and a process for neighborhood groups to identify community strengths and weaknesses, create a vision for the future and make sure that every voice was heard and represented.  Using color, shape, imagination and a lot of interactive sharing, each group created a symbol and chose a color to represent their neighborhood. With paint and colored markers and lots and lots of big sheets of paper, each group collectively drew a picture, a diagram of their challenges, their current situation and their hope for the future of their community.  

It was an enormous amount of work, undertaken in a very short period of time.  I was privileged to assist Ms. Yeh and while I learned more than I can say from the experience, one lesson – a technique, actually – will stick with me. 

When things got loud or confused and Ms. Yeh (a small woman with a soft voice) needed the group’s attention, she didn’t yell or clap her hands.  She started to sing.

“Time to come together, time to come together,” she sang, walking from group to group, taking someone’s hand, encouraging them to sing with her and take another’s hand until everyone was singing “Time to come together,” and had gathered in a big circle.  Gentle, respectful, joyful, powerful. 

Finally, one of Ms. Yeh’s comments keeps reverberating for me – especially as the news about the Gulf oil spill fills every waking hour of the day.  There is a correlation between the waste of people and resources within our cities and the devastation of our irreplaceable oceans.  As Lily said, “Maybe some are guilty in catastrophe – but all are responsible.”

Click the photos to see them full-sized:

An oxymoron?  Maybe. Maybe not. 

So much of what foundations do may seem obscure, even secret, to those outside what admittedly is often a complex bureaucracy.  But the philanthropic field itself is trying hard to shine light and create greater transparency for the field and the work we do.

One way is to ask grantees critical questions about their relationship with their funders and then ask the funder to publish the results of these surveys, along with reactions and changes to what these surveys reveal.   

The Cleveland Foundation has done just that.  We recently submitted to a major survey by the Center for Effective Philanthropy of 400 of the foundation’s 2008 grantees.  The 86-page Grantee Perception Report, complete with charts, graphs and anonymous comments from grantees, can be found on our website, under the Grantmaking tab.

This is the second such survey the foundation has commissioned.  We were among the very first group of foundations to agree to this revelatory practice back in 2003.  Then, as now, we are in general, pleased with what was revealed.  The foundation scored high on most measures as compared to a similar group of funders nationwide.  But there were some less than glowing reviews for our performance as well.

Many grantees thought we were not sufficiently responsive to the reports we require for our grants and wondered if anybody really read them.  See Program Officer Paul Putman’s blog post about this.  As a result of these comments we have resolved to communicate in a better and more timely fashion with grantees as we review their grant reports. 

We are also thinking about ways that we can share learning and information from these reports outside the foundation – but in a way that preserves confidentiality.  The last thing we want is to have grantees become reluctant to be honest about the results of their programs and projects.  We understand that conditions change rapidly in the nonprofit sector and many organizations are attempting things never done before. We value the learning that comes from our grantees’ creative efforts.  It would be counterproductive to jeopardize the entrepreneurship and thoughtful risk-taking of those addressing problems and opportunities in the nonprofit sector. 

There is much more in the GRP, and we welcome any comments about the report from the public.  We sincerely thank all our hard-working grantees who took the time to provide their insights.  The results of this report will continue to fuel the foundation’s own continuous improvement efforts for some time to come.

So said Sarah Morrison of MorrisonDance, a local modern dance company, about her dancers’ first rehearsals with Sevi Bayraktar, a Turkish “Roma,” or gypsy dancer, and choreographer.  Sevi is in residence with Young Audiences and MorrisonDance for five months through the Cleveland Foundation’s Creative Fusion program.

Indeed, when I watched a recent rehearsal for “Mysterious,” the dance Sevi is making and that will be premiered on Cleveland Public Theater’s DanceWorks series April 15 through 18, I saw body parts moving independently that I never knew could do so.  The company’s warm-up music was a cover of Sting’s “Legal Alien” (Englishman in New York) and the opening of Sevi’s dance mimics the kind of Sharks and Jets rivalry of West Side Story (but with all-women gangs).  So it is safe to assume we will be seeing some high energy, cross-cultural story-telling in “Mysterious.” 

As I came into the MorrisonDance studio, I encountered a bicycle – Sevi’s.  She bought it as soon as she got here and has been tooling around Cleveland under her own steam for the past several months.  “She knows more people in more places than I do.” says Sarah – who has lived all around the city for years.

Indeed, one of the wonderful things that I have seen both from Sevi and from Turkish playwright Özen Yula, who is also here under the auspices of Creative Fusion, is their absolute blindness to any borders, barriers or Balkanized neighborhoods that too many of us take for granted in Cleveland.  Sevi bicycles with ease from Cleveland Heights to Ohio City.  Özen travels from Gordon Square to Playhouse Square to University Circle, and works comfortably with black inner-city children, multicultural college students and local artists.

Sarah says that Sevi sees Cleveland with new eyes and that she has helped bridge communities for the company.  Much has been said about how art bridges cultures, but it’s the artists that build the bridge.  Artists have an openness to experience that lets them do this more naturally than people in other professions, I believe, and I am happy to have these artists from elsewhere help us see ourselves anew.

Click the photos for a full-size view:

Two dozen students in various combinations of tights, leotards, sweats and T-shirts surrounded renowned Cuban prima ballerina Laura Alonso following the rigorous master class she had just offered them in the main studio of the Mather Dance Center at CWRU.  Ms. Alonso was here through a partnership with DanceCleveland and Case brokered by the Cleveland Foundation as part of the Foundation’s interests in expanding Cleveland’s understanding of Cuba and its culture.

For 90 minutes, students of Case’s dance program and local professional dancers were put through a non-stop series of precision warm-ups at the barre, and then given the opportunity to explore a range of short but complex movements from the classical repertoire.  With a single demonstration of the steps she wanted them to repeat, Ms. Alonso set the dancers moving, pacing around and through them pointing, pushing poking, pressing to correct form and praising when what she saw pleased her.

I am constantly amazed at dancers’ ability to repeat a complex series of steps after having seen them just once.  And I think it is beautiful how, no matter what a dancer’s native language is, all dancers ‘speak’ ballet; pliè, arabesque, etc.    

Daughter of the internationally renowned prima ballerina Alicia Alonso, and a world famous ballerina in her own right, Ms. Alonso is a woman of grace, gravitas, wicked humor and absolute commitment to the great traditions of classical dance.  She knows all styles and in her class she often stopped to demonstrate the differences between Russian and American approaches to certain movements and explain the Cuban ‘style’ – which she teaches in her own school and company in Cuba. 

She travels regularly and has longstanding relationships with ballet schools around the world.  On this trip, after a few days in Cleveland, she is off to other cities in the U.S. to work with other students eager to learn from a master so strongly connected to the grand and universal traditions of ballet.  We were privileged to host her here.

Here are a few photos of her master class. Click photo for full size image.

Last night I had the privilege of observing the year-end championship competition for the Cleveland Schools’ elementary grade’s Military Drill Corps and Hi-Stepper Cheerleading teams in the large gym at John Hay High School.  Who even knew there was such an activity in our schools?  I didn’t.

These were 6th, 7th and 8th graders: four drill teams and six cheerleading teams from 10 different CMSD schools.  It was the first sweltering night of the year and the gym was packed.  I estimated at least 800 parents, friends and family turned out to fill the bleachers top to bottom on either side of the gym floor: a noisy, happy, proud crowd.

Two rounds of high energy, precision competition were interspersed with awards for perfect attendance and grade averages at or above 3.0.  Representatives of the military were there, in dress uniform, to judge the drill teams.  Dance, gymnastics and cheerleading professionals judged the Hi-Steppers.  The music was loud, and there was enough wattage in the smiles of kids and parents to light the gym without electricity.

I was particularly impressed with the drill team from Marion Sterling Elementary School, which won first place.  Led by a young girl who barked orders like a Master Sergeant, the team marched, saluted, handled wooden rifles and stepped to rhythmic and syncopated commands with straight backs, serious faces and incredible confidence.

The first and second place winners of the cheerleading competition (Forest Hill Parkway and Alexander G. Bell respectively) created a really hard choice for the judges.  I couldn’t pick my favorite.  I’m convinced the girls all had springs in their shoes and rubber bands for hamstrings.  Hi-stepping indeed!  The choreography was creative, the complex rhythmic patterns were impressive and the unison high-kick lines brought smiles and cheers from me as well as the audience.

I left the gym after a good two hours of clapping my hands raw and feeling that I would never be able to relax my face from grinning.  A very good night.

What do Adam and Eve, Jews, Japanese Americans, Armenians and Native Americans have in common?  These and other peoples have all experienced exile from their homeland and the hardship and conflict of being displaced. 

Some, like Japanese Americans during WWII, and Native Americans even today, were exiled within the borders of their own country – to internment camps and reservations.  Others were forced out of their homeland to wander and face discrimination in other lands.

The commonality and brutality of exile across the centuries and the globe is the subject of “codename:EXILE” a play being developed and produced by Cleveland State University drama students under the direction of visiting Turkish artist in residence, Özen Yula.  The play tells the stories of eight different groups of exiles from different historical eras.  It will be performed in CSU’s Factory Theater April 22 through May 3, Thursday, Friday and Saturday evenings at 8 p.m.  Contact the box office at 216.687.2109 for tickets.

I was privileged to view a rehearsal of the play this week and was impressed with the commitment and energy of the 22 students who make up the cast and crew.  Özen is also impressed with the students, remarking that many of them hold jobs as well as attending classes, yet they bring great passion to their work with him.  (Rehearsals go late into the evening.) 

From what I observed, this play will be filled with powerful images and very dramatic, often stylized action.  The audience will have a unique experience as well, since the stage is being built around and through the entire black box space of CSU’s Factory Theater.  The audience will be required to move and turn to follow the action as it moves around them.  I’m told that the unique experience will actually begin as soon as audience members enter the theater.  (I won’t say any more.  You’ll have to find out for yourself.)

Özen’s work at CSU is part of his long-term residency in Cleveland, supported by the Cleveland Foundation’s Creative Fusion program.  He’s already helped a group of Cleveland Municipal School District teens create their own play, and will be working with Cleveland Public Theater this spring and summer to write and produce another world premier for CPT’s fall season.  More on all this later.  For now, here’s a few photos from the rehearsal at CSU.

Click photo to see full-size image.

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I attended the Cuyahoga Arts and Culture (CAC) board meeting this week (why does no one from the arts community except a representative from our commercial classical radio station ever show up to these open, public meetings?) and suddenly was caught by thoughts of how much has changed in our arts community in the past decade.  Most of it for the better.

Ten years ago we had no organized advocate and public policy agent for the arts.  Now we have the well-established Community Partnership for Arts and Culture (CPAC) with a robust mission of research, policy, and capacity-building for the arts sector.

Ten years ago, no one in Cleveland could even imagine dedicated, tax-based local support for the arts – all the arts, not just the big guys.  Artists, too.  Today, the resources from the cigarette tax, administered by CAC have made Cleveland/Cuyahoga County one of the nation’s top five sources of local government support for the arts and, along with the services and opportunities provided by CPAC, one of the most artist-friendly cities in the country.

Ten years ago Great Lakes Theater Festival was contemplating closing its doors: in debt, without any street presence, performing in a space twice the size and cost of other classic theaters in the nation.  Today it has completed a successful capital and endowment campaign, balanced its budget for eight years in a row and performs in one of the most visible, innovative and audience-friendly ‘rooms’ for theater in the country.

Ten years ago the Cleveland Orchestra steadfastly clung to its elite persona, touting its ‘world class’ status while ignoring the fact that it lived in a shrinking city with an aging audience base.  Today, while still facing financial challenges, the organization has also begun to face the need to change its culture and embrace new ways of serving the community and a future audience that will look nothing like the patrons of the past.

Ten years ago Playhouse Square was banking on the potential of the Allen Theater to host long-running Broadway shows, attracting tourists and generating the revenues to support the local resident performing arts companies in PHS’s large and expensive theaters.   No sooner was the renovation done than the business model for touring shows changed.  Today, no one can book a Broadway show for more than a few weeks. 

But the expensively renovated Allen has become the focal point for growth opportunities for both Cleveland

StateUniversity’s drama department and the Cleveland Play House, which itself has seen incredible change in the past 10 years.�
CPH has evolved from a venerable but dowdy institution in serious threat of extinction by virtue of its own version of elitist separatism, to an energized, collaborative and forward-thinking organization, which sees its future as part of the city’s robust theater district – not separate from it.  Hurrah!

A Film Festival that clawed its way back from the brink to become one of the best in the country according to Time Magazine, and which surprises itself each year by exceeding its own ambitious expectations – despite blizzards and global economic crises. 

But we have seen losses in the past 10 years too.  Two ballet companies.  Two chamber orchestras.  One opera company.  One science/health museum.  To name the most visible.

Still, from my vantage point – and despite the Great Recession, which will continue to present challenges for all sectors in the years to come, I have to say that Cleveland’s cultural sector is in a better place today than it was a decade ago.  Those challenges will be financial, of course, but perhaps more important and difficult to surmount will be the  challenges of serving an increasingly and differently diverse consumer base for culture than in the past, as I have said here and elsewhere before. 

It will be interesting, 10 years from now, to look back and see what our cultural community looks like.  I plan to be living in a condo downtown and walking to the theater by then.  And maybe hopping the light rail out Euclid to the museums and the Orchestra (one can dream).

* BTW, I claim to make the best ‘classic’ Madeleines this side of Paris.

Thursday, 3:30 p.m., when most students are on their way home from school, seven high school students from various Cleveland Metropolitan schools (John Hay, Promise Academy, Cleveland School of the Arts and John Marshall) gather at John Hay High School in University Circle to meet and work with internationally renowned Turkish playwright Özen Yula.

For more than two hours these bright young people, who volunteered for the program, are challenged to create characters and scenarios, and improvise scenes among themselves as part of the important background research into character development and the crafting of a compelling structure for a play.

Overseen by the district’s Director of Arts Education Tony Sias, these students will work with Mr. Yula two days a week after school for the next eight weeks and in the process write and perform in their own play. 

Their first homework assignment included researching important events in Cleveland, the U.S. and the world during the years 2007-09, which will be the time frame for the play. 

“But information is not enough.  Information is different than knowledge,” according to Mr. Yula.  It is not enough for a writer or an actor to have information about the people or the situations in a play.  “You need to know what the knowledge means – the ability to analyze is critical for the artist.”

The premise of the student’s play is deceptively simple: three characters, from different backgrounds, become friends in college and then go their separate ways, only to come together a year after graduation. 

But their diverse backgrounds and the different experiences each has after university will create the interest, the conflict and the resolution that will form the unique story of the play.  “Something happens to make a character more than just a person,” according to the playwright, and Özen helped the students understand that their play must have believable characters, not just stereotypes. 

I was privileged to observe this early developmental session for the play, and was impressed with the very important questions and choices the students began to wrestle with.  Simply deciding who the characters were – their ages, backgrounds, race and gender, economic status – raised very critical questions the students had to resolve.  Should they all be black?  How diverse should they be and still be both believable as friends and representative of Cleveland?  Where will each go after graduation and why? 

One question struck me as profound.  In response to Mr. Yula’s comment about how the playwright must like his characters; “If you don’t like them, you can’t write them,” he said, a student asked, “Do we have to like them at the beginning or can we grow to like them?”  This engendered a fascinating discussion about finding the humanity in people – and in the play’s characters, even when you do not like what they do in the play. 

This was not easy work for these students.  But I was very impressed with the seriousness of their engagement – and I can’t wait to see the play they make.  I will be following the development of this work as well as Özen’s engagement with the community via CSU and Cleveland Public Theater through October.  So stay tuned.

Click photo to see full size.