Last week I attended a lecture and poetry reading by Dr. Rafael Campo, sponsored jointly by Case Western Reserve University and the Cleveland Clinic’s Lerner College of Medicine and the Clinic’s Center for Ethics, Humanities and Spiritual Care.  Since it was a poetry reading, you might suspect the “Dr.” indicates Dr. Campo’s terminal degree in Arts and Letters.  But he is a medical doctor – a general practitioner – and a poet.  

Dr. Campo is a champion for the healing power of language.  And what he means by this is something far more complex and layered than just the way that writing poetry can express and thereby help relieve a patient’s experience of illness. 

Dr. Campo talks so eloquently about the unfortunate “militarization” of the language of medicine – how doctors are trained to “fight” illness; that if they haven’t cured the disease they’ve “lost the battle.”  This focus on the illness as an enemy of the doctor’s, rather than on the suffering of the patient, distances the doctor from the humanity of the ones who are suffering.  In his poetry, Dr. Campo tries to elevate the stories of the patient through the low-tech language of poetry, and to combat (or counter attack?) the clinical and scientific language that creates a protective wall behind which doctors can hide from the reality of their patients’ pain.   

When he writes, he uses the poetic meter of what he calls “the iambic heartbeat.”  The “iamb” is a metrical measure of two syllables, the first unstressed, the second stressed – da DUM / da DUM / da DUM / etc., echoing the pumping rhythm of the heart.  Much of Shakespeare’s most famous lines are written in iambic pentameter, (five “iambs” to the line.)* It is, perhaps, the most familiar rhythm to English-speaking people.   

The reading was attended by med students, humanities students, doctors, poets, and other Clinic staff.   Also present, and reading their poems, were three medical students — winners of this year’s William Carlos Williams poetry contest,  a 40-year-old competition sponsored by NEOMED (Northeast Ohio Medical University) of which Dr. Campo was the third winner in his student days.

  *If mu- / -sic be / the food / of love, / play on

Last week I had the privilege of previewing several sections of a new work by Bill Wade’s Inlet Dance Theater. They were in residence in Playhouse Square’s Launch program, which gives a local performing arts group the time, space, and resources to develop new work. Bill and his company had done a residency on Easter Island a few years ago. Since returning, they have been working on choreographing an evening-length piece inspired by the cultural experiences they had there. The Launch program was supporting the completion of that work. What I saw was wonderful – original and deeply moving work. I can’t wait to see the whole piece.  But what I heard, from Bill’s thoughtful, passionate recounting of his and the dancers’ experiences, was in some ways even more meaningful to me.  Inlet was the first modern dance company to ever visit Easter Island. In their time there, the Americans learned much from the ancient native traditions of dance and music – unchanged over the generations. But when the Inlet dancers performed for the Islanders, the Americans got a lesson in humility and diplomacy. One Islander saw the many different kinds of movement in the Americans’ work and was puzzled about what the tradition was that generated the movement. When Bill said there was no one tradition (“We made it up ourselves”) the individual was astounded. “They make it themselves!” was repeated again and again in amazement. And the impact of this reaction on Bill was to recognize that he and his company were not just artists exchanging creative ideas, they were ambassadors for American culture. This created a sense of deep responsibility that he had not felt in quite the same way before. And it also surfaced something that we, as Americans, don’t often remember; that what makes us so different from the rest of the world is the fact that we don’t all come from a long and shared tradition. We make our culture ourselves – and it is as complex and various and changing as we are. And the freedom we have to create here makes our culture forever new, and therefore undefinable, except in the way that we relate to and share with those outside our experience.In the Cleveland Foundation’s Creative Fusion program, we are learning that the international artists we help bring here gain a perspective on America that most of them do not get in their home countries.  Almost without exception, all of the artists who have spent time here (11 to date) have said, in one way or another, “America is very different from what I expected. The people are kind and generous and they care about us and about one another.”  In a way, everyone who interacts with our program’s visitors is an ambassador for American culture.  Cleveland is working on many levels to reclaim its place as an important international city.  If we are all part of the continual process of making our own unique American culture, it seems to me that we need to share Bill’s sense of diplomatic responsibility as cultural ambassadors – here in our own hometown. 

I have been amazed and enlightened by many things I have learned from the Cuban artists who have been in residence these past months as part of our Creative Fusion program.  Last week, art historian Meira Marrero and visual artist Josè Toirac presented their work at a lecture in collaboration with the Cleveland Clinic at the clinic’s Glickman Conference Center. And while I’d heard these visitors speak before, this lecture took me deeper into an understanding of the role that art plays in the larger Cuban culture.

Although much of Cuban art is political, it is both revered and respected by the political establishment.  I see two possible reasons for this. The world values the arts and so Cuba has invested significantly in training artists. Second, the world values the work of Cuban artists and so the prominence of these artists internationally does credit to the regime. 

But there is another, more subtle and sophisticated reason that Cuban art can carry a politically challenging message while being accepted by those it is criticizing.  All of the Cuban art that our visitors have presented here is based on fact.  Cuban artists are telling their country’s own story and using materials and images taken from their real lives – but repurposing them to carry a message or reflect reality in a way that is deeply meaningful.  If and when confronted, the artist can show that the images are merely part of what IS as interpreted through an artistic medium – not a subjective and biased social commentary by a political activist. 

So Josè Toirac’s series of photographs juxtaposing current street scenes and buildings in Havana with their counterparts from 50+ years ago is fact – at the same time it comments on what Cuba has lost under the longstanding regime.  One work, however, went a little too far.  Josè and Meira created an exhibition of the portraits of all of Cuba’s presidents (more than two dozen in Cuba’s turbulent history – some of whom only held office for a few days) which places Fidel near the end as just one of many, followed by his brother and with an empty nail in the wall for the next el presidente. While it would be going too far to say the work was officially censored, the government used the excuse of “this is just not the right time” for the work to be shown in Cuba.

Finally, near the end of the lecture, Toirac explained that Cuba had two heroes – Ulysses and Achilles.  When asked about using mythological Greeks as heroes of the Cuban people, Toirac explained that those that carry the culture of Cuba are always looking to the place where Cuban culture intersects with global culture.  And in the life of contemporary Cuba, Fidel Castro and Che Guevera stand as oppositional archetypes.  Fidel is like the wily Ulysses (Odysseus), always scheming to outwit fate and live for glory and fame. 

The long story of Ulysses’ journey as one of the only survivors of the Trojan War bespeaks his, and by extension Fidel’s, triumph over every adversity the gods threw at him.  On the other hand, to be mature in the world is to be like Che – not the man, but the symbol who, like Achilles, chose to fight and strive and die for the glory of his homeland.  

I was struck by the real and deep connection these very contemporary Cuban artists were making with universal human archetypes of Western civilization, bringing a mythical but shared past into their understanding of the particular and present reality of their lives. It was quite moving.

 Alex Hernandez Dueñas is one of five Cuban artists who have been in residence in Cleveland since late last year.   Brought  here by the Cleveland Institute of Art (CIA) under the Cleveland Foundation’s Creative Fusion program, Alex and the other artists have been making art and lecturing about Cuba – its art and history – in various venues around Cleveland. 

When I met with Alex during an exhibition of his work in his studio at CIA, I asked him what his impression of Cleveland was and what he will remember most from his time here.  He said the most interesting thing.  He was deeply impressed with the Clevelanders he met who loved this city and were committed to stay here and make things better. 

“It’s like many of the people in Cuba,” he said.  “Many people left because they didn’t agree with the way things were.  And many people have left Cleveland.  But many have stayed here – or come back.  Many people stayed in Cuba because we loved the place and wanted to do what we could to make it better.”

The sense of “place” permeates Alex’s two-dimensional work; gloriously rich oil paintings soaked with sun, bright shadows, and lush tropical vegetation.  People exist almost exclusively as shadows cast on the landscape and across the water.

 His work may at first appear as merely very beautiful and technically exceptional.   But I have learned that all Cuban art is political.  Although Alex is young, and was not around when the Castro regime came to power, he lives in a world where the Cuban image of America is stuck in the 1950s.  His paintings reflect that Cuban dream of Miami as almost a Hollywood set of the privileged class: swimming pools abound and perfectly manicured lawns surrounding clean, modern houses and constant sunshine.  The work comments on the isolation of Cubans and their lack of awareness of the current realities of American life

Earlier this year a video work of Alex’s was featured in an exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art here, as part of a collaboration between CIA and MOCA through the Creative Fusion residency program.  It featured a Cuban man painstakingly carrying bucket after bucket after bucket of water up many flights of stairs in order to fill a bathtub so he could take a bath.  It commented on both the lack of amenities, such as running water, for most Cuban people, but also on the great dignity of people who will do what it takes to be, and respect themselves as civilized human beings. It is a beautiful film.

In addition to producing a large volume of work while here – much of which will be exhibited in the prestigious Havana Biennial – Alex and his fellow artists have spent as much time as possible on the Internet.  With little to no access to the Internet at home, the Creative Fusion residencies have provided a rich and rare research opportunity for the Cubans.

Alex has just left us but two other Cubans will remain in Cleveland through March: painter José Ángel Toirac Batista and his art historian wife, Meira Marrero Díaz.  I look forward to sharing more of their thoughts and impressions in the weeks to come.

Rather than “How to move a store,” this blog should be titled “Why move a store?”  When Creative Fusion artist Cristián Schmitt came to Cleveland from his home in Santiago, Chile, in April this year, he saw much to inspire him in creating new work.  Cristián is an architect-designer with a passion for finding solutions for distressed urban environments.  He built temporary housing for the disaster victims of Chile’s devastating earthquake, and he is committed to working as much as possible with green technology and recycled materials.   

In Cleveland he saw both the vacancy of retail in the downtown area as an opportunity.  What if, he said, retail vendors could rent a shop that could be moved from place to place, but also be secure from weather and theft and be big enough to hold substantial inventory?  They wouldn’t have the expense and risk of a long-term lease on a storefront and could, over a season, experiment with different locations for their wares.  And Cleveland neighborhoods could have more vitality at street level from unique local retail vendors.

Enter SHOPBOX, the prototype of just such a portable retail space.  And we are not talking food carts or kiosks, here.  The SHOPBOX is a 13 x 7 x 9 foot enclosed space, with floor, walls, doors, and a skylight roof that can be configured in a wide variety of ways to accommodate many different kinds of salable goods.  And it can be picked up and loaded onto a flatbed truck for transport in 15 minutes. 

Made of recycled materials from RTA bus stops, reclaimed wood, and used street and traffic signs, and fabricated by Cristián and metalworker Mike Moritz in the Tyler Village artist/industrial complex in Midtown, SHOPBOX had its premiere outing as the bar for Playhouse Square’s Block Party on Star Plaza last Friday.  It will move to the Ingenuity Festival as the t-shirt and information booth next week and then to the plaza at Progressive Field during an Indians’ game.

Not quite finished for its Playhouse Square debut (a few of the wall panels had not yet been installed), still the SHOPBOX performed perfectly as crowds lined up for drinks at the Block Party.  It will have its doors and walls complete for Ingenuity.

I will post more about Cristián and his Creative Fusion residency in future blogs – including the incredible research and planning – and collaboration - that went into the conception and manufacturing of the SHOPBOX.

Although he’s been here a few months already, Creative Fusion international artist Cristian Schmitt, from Chile, was just recently welcomed by the community at a reception held at the Idea Center in PlayhouseSquare. Creative Fusion, now in its second year, partners with Cleveland’s cultural, educational, and civic institutions to host foreign artists for long-term, community-based residencies as a way to share culture and creative ideas at a deeply engaged level.

Based in Santiago, Cristian is an architect/designer whose work has focused on environmentally friendly affordable housing and temporary housing for disaster victims.  Chile’s great earthquake a few years ago put his talents to work.  He is here on a six month residency as part of the Foundation’s Creative Fusion: International Artist in Residence Program.  His hosts are PlayhouseSquare, the Kent State Urban Design Collaborative, Downtown Cleveland Alliance , and Cleveland Public Art , and collectively this group has launched a unique program, called Cleveland tm (teach + make). 

The goal is to engage a creative designer to create and prototype a new product that can be trademarked, manufactured, and sold through the long-discussed District of Design centered in Playhouse Square.  The program also includes an educational component, connecting the artist/designer with other local artists and students to teach and share product concept and design skills.  

While he is here, Cristian will work with students at Max Hayes Vocational High School, teaching students how to read blueprints and architectural drawings, and design a small structure and help them built it. 

For DCA and Playhouse Square, he is looking at the potential for creative re-use of the old corrugated metal RTA shelters that have been replaced by the sleek new Health Line bus stops along Euclid Avenue.  The Urban Design Collaborative has generously provided studio and working space for Cristian, and Cleveland Public Art will help him navigate the commercial manufacturing scene here and connect him with local artists. 

At his welcome reception, Cristian shared some of his sketchbook drawings that included movable, secure, pop-up retail space for the Public Square-to-PlayhouseSquare retail corridor; attractive, on-street public washrooms that incorporate trees and plantings; and a portable, bicycle-driven laundry for the homeless.

In his remarks at the reception, Cristian talked about a small boy’s experience of his bed shaking during the earthquake in Chile and how his father, in trying to reassure him, also shook the bed to show how the shaking bed couldn’t hurt him.  Cristian said, “Maybe in Cleveland we can also shake some beds.”

We don’t yet know what exactly Cristian will prototype for his hosts, but we do know he has been exceedingly busy for the first weeks he’s been here, meeting with architects from Westlake Reed Leskosky, connecting with local artists and commercial manufacturers, teaching at Max Hayes, and traveling to Detroit and Cleveland’s unseen places researching the homeless situation here – which he says, while very sad, is better than the extremely poor conditions at home.

We look forward to seeing Cristian’s final prototype design this fall. 

No, this isn’t about lakefront preservation.  It’s about the arts.  It’s about how Cleveland’s cultural community must venture into uncharted waters to find the new and next generation of individuals needed to maintain our remarkable cultural sector’s strength and excellence.

On June 6, the Community Partnership for Arts and Culture (CPAC) hosted a remarkable symposium, “Audience Matters,” at IdeaCenter.  More than 100 members of the cultural community, including people from Akron and Lorain County, heard speakers talk about the way the arts must change in order to attract and serve a broader constituency – one that is younger, more diverse, and representative of people who have lived their lives without seeing the arts as an important part of what makes those lives worth living.

These people have an unprecedented wealth of entertainment options vying for their time, attention, and dollars.  These people have been immersed in technology that has given them opportunities to create work themselves – in their own time, and at low or no cost.  These people want to be part of the picture – not just someone looking at a picture.

The Cleveland Foundation has been talking about the huge demographic shift facing the arts for some time now (read my op-ed on this topic from the Plain Dealer), so we were very pleased to see CPAC offer this rich experience for the sector.

In taking up the challenge ahead, the symposium’s keynote speaker, Richard Evans, declared that the arts faced “a shock wave of both enormous potential and organizational disruption.”  He chronicled the shifts that have already taken place, from the traditional model of professional artistic excellence and limited/elite availability to a new framework for creative work that recognized the professional amateur and the vast abundance of work these individuals produce outside of the institutional framework.

He suggested the arts sector needed to move from being a provider of services to an enabler of participation and direct experience. And the arts must become more porous — open and responsive to its community.  He called this a capacity for “dynamic adaptability” and said it meant having a high tolerance for taking risks.  And to do this, the arts will need to restructure their financial models to make room for risk capital, working capital, and flexible resources that allow for rapid responses to opportunities and new ideas.

After the keynote, a series of case studies were presented that offered models of this dynamic adaptability from other cities.  Charlie Miller from the Denver Theatre Centre urged the symposium participants “Don’t do what you think your audiences want.  Do what you think is awesome!”  And he showed how that has worked for them.  Sarah Lutman, CEO of the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, talked about how the orchestra has dramatically reduced marketing costs while dramatically growing attendance by bonding the marketing and development departments.  Renee Baldocchi of the de Young Museum in San Francisco bravely chronicled the almost guerrilla-like efforts of the program department to move interactive audience programming directly into the galleries, and its efforts to partner with dramatically nontraditional external organizations to make friends with people who had never visited the museum.

Finally, the very engaging Andy Goodman gave the whole group a hands-on primer on how to tell a good story and provided compelling data on why storytelling is the most effective marketing tool any organization possesses. 

Watch this blog in the coming months for more on how the arts must change to engage a far broader and more diverse constituency that they have been comfortable with in the past.

* “One doesn’t discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore.” André Gide

About the title of the blog - later.  First …

Last week the Global Cleveland Summit provided a terrific forum for brainstorming ideas about how Cleveland can create an environment and message of welcome and opportunity to the world, and a culture of optimism among locals.  I did not get a chance to sample all the sessions offered throughout the day, but did sit in on one that I thought spoke very interestingly to the cloud of self doubt and “it won’t happen here” attitude that seems so pervasive in Cleveland.

The session discussed the SOMO Movement – social and emotional learning – and provided research on something called “learned helplessness.”   It seems that the majority of people (and animals, according to some icky scientific research) who experience a series of negative reactions to efforts they make, “learn” that nothing will change and, in fact, end up choosing failure even when options for success are presented to them.

I think Cleveland has been “learning” to choose failure for a very long time, but the cycle is hard to break.  We are stuck in what’s familiar and, as Shakespeare said, we’d “rather keep those ills we have than fly to others we know not of.”  A perfect description of learned helplessness.

Silly, isn’t it?  And stupid.  Which one of us has not learned and gotten better as a result of past failures?  Why are we so reluctant to try something we haven’t done before – or let others try new things?  Have we believed in failure so long that we are paralyzed by the unfounded certainty that whatever we try will automatically fail?  Are there just too many people here who have never been anywhere else and so have no basis for comparison? 

I did hear some sane and forward-thinking comments from some of the community’s older leaders while at the Global Cleveland Summit:

“The only thing wrong with Cleveland is February and March.  But then there’s one bad season everywhere.  No mud slides, hurricanes, floods, forest fires here.”

“We (the old guard) should put out the hors d’oeuvres, pour the drinks and let the young people get on with it.”

Last week I toured the city with a Brit who has worked all over the world.  She was agog at Cleveland’s beauty, culture accessibility, and livability.  She said no one in Europe, Asia, or Africa has a bad opinion of Cleveland; they just have no opinion because they don’t know about it.  She thinks Cleveland should market itself as “the lifestyle city.”

Now for that title.  For one example of a town that seems to have no problem putting itself and lots of its young and unconventional faces out there on its own behalf, right along with the Mayor singing “American Pie,” check out this fun, sweet and very engaging YouTube video.  Talk about a welcoming community.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPjjZCO67WI&feature=player_embedded#at=14

So what do you know about “Noise Music?”  Not much?  Or maybe a lot?  Depends on your age maybe, or what your musical interests are.  I fancy myself a music lover and I like all kinds – classical, Broadway musicals, Cole Porter, Steven Sondheim, Hoagy Carmichael, Phil Collins, blues, jazz, folk, a little country, new age, hard rock, heavy metal, some grunge … you get the idea.  But I had no idea what noise music was when I first encountered the term at a meeting of a focus group for Cuyahoga Arts and Culture a month ago.

So imagine my surprise when Ari Maron, partner in MRN Ltd., the local construction and development company (and a trained musician), and Tom Welsh, associate director of music for the Cleveland Museum of Art, mentioned that Cleveland is one of the national centers for noise music and that we have a number of famous noise music bands working here.

Although I’ve lived here all my life and I THINK I am pretty tuned in to what’s going on in the arts scene here, I am still surprised sometimes that I don’t know what I don’t know about this place.

The Community Partnership for Arts and Culture (CPAC) has begun to take a really deep dive into the whole ecosystem of different art forms here – starting with music.  They have commissioned research from Cleveland State University that will look at the music subsector: nonprofit/professional, for-profit/commercial, amateur/avocational, classical to noise.  The purpose is to really get a handle on the full range of assets we have in the arts, to better understand their critical interrelationships, and to demonstrate how the arts are deeply integrated into the region’s economy, its workforce, the quality of life here, and Cleveland’s attractiveness to outsiders.  I can’t wait to see what the whole music landscape looks like.

I am grateful to Tom for forwarding the video http://www.motherboard.tv/2011/3/7/electric-independence-emeralds–2 that introduced me to EMERALDS, a local noise music group that seems to have captured national attention and who have many wonderful things to say about Cleveland and why they make music here.

So refreshing to hear a group of young people who have an intrinsic understanding of and value for what makes this part of the planet special.  Give a look/listen.  Per Tom – no earplugs needed.

The Grantmakers in the Arts READER: Ideas and Information on Arts and Cultureis a much anticipated, thrice-yearly journal for professional arts grantmakers. The fall 2010 issue offered a compilation of research across the field that is chock full of interesting, useful, and sometimes scary data.  Often scary data. 

Helicon Collaborative’s report on research among foundations nationwide chronicles a number of trends among arts funders and arts organizations that makes an incontrovertible case for the fact that the world of the arts has changed.   

The good news is that, with the exception of corporate, community, and public funders, other arts funders have pretty much stayed the course in their level and kind of support for the arts.  The bad news is that corporate, community, and public funders (and that’s a lot of funders) are finding it increasingly hard to argue for the arts in the face of social and human needs.  Thirty-three percent of the arts funders surveyed have reduced their arts funding – some by as much as 30 percent. And public funding agencies have cut arts funding by 25 percent since 2008, with most eliminating any support for individual artists.

Except in Cleveland.

Cuyahoga County and the state of Minnesota are alone in enacting new legislation in recent years to increase support for the arts.  And in Cleveland a lot of that support goes to individual artist fellowships - among the largest such fellowship awards anywhere, through the Community Partnership for Arts and Culture’s Creative Workforce Fellowships, funded by Cuyahoga Arts and Culture. 

For as long as I have been at the Cleveland Foundation (20 years next month!), the funding community locally and nationally has been urging collaboration among the arts  – for impact, for efficiency, for quality.  And as long as I have been here, the national conversation about collaboration in the arts has been one of frustration.  The Helicon report states that while there is some programmatic partnership taking place, true collaboration and mergers are still mightily resisted in the arts.

But not quite so much in Cleveland. A few examples:

·        Ideastream: the brilliant PlayhouseSquare/Public Television/Public Radio collaboration and shared facility venture of just a few years ago

·        The Hanna Theater: the brilliantly innovative and collaborative theater renovation by Great Lakes Theater and PlayhouseSquare

·        The upcoming merger of Cleveland Public Art and ParkWorks

·        The Natural History Museum’s embrace of the Heath Museum at its closure and the merger of David Beach’s environmental organization into the Museum’s GreenCityBlueLake Institute

·        The current three-part collaboration among PlayhouseSquare, the Cleveland Play House and Cleveland State University on renovated facilities and shared educational programs

A recent report commissioned by the Columbus Foundation on the health and sustainability of the arts in 15 mid-sized American cities shows that Cleveland’s is among a very few arts sectors that can be judged as ‘vital’ as opposed to simply viable – or worse. 

So, I’m looking at the glass as half full these days and bucking the trend of the doom-sayers.  Yes, things have changed.  But with every turn in the road there are new vistas and new opportunities.  We just need to step up to them with courage and enthusiasm.