For more than a year, artists have complained that Cuyahoga Arts and Culture –the entity that administers the cigarette tax for the arts–did not meet the requirement that at least two of its members “devote a major portion of their time to practicing, performing or teaching any of the arts, or […] are professional administrators in any field of the […]
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The list of applicants to serve on the Board of Directors at Cuyahoga Arts and Culture has grown a bit since CAN last reported. As of January 4, 19 people had applied for the coming term. The County Executive’s office initially said they “ideally” wanted all applications in hand by January 1, but has confirmed that applications are still being […]
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Cuyahoga Arts and Culture Board President Nancy Mendez apologized to artists present at the CAC Board meeting December 13. An apology was the first priority expressed in the 2023 Support for Artists: Community Engagement and Planning report, commissioned by CAC and delivered a week earlier by a contractor on behalf of Assembly for the Arts. CAC director Jill Paulsen said […]
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Cuyahoga Arts and Culture’s entire budget for partner organizations making individual artist grants each year–$400,000 –is less than one percent of Deshaun Watson’s annual salary. Indeed, the sum of all grants CAC’s board recently approved for all organizations combined amounts to less than 25 percent of that one football player’s annual salary. This tangential comparison doesn’t just highlight the difference […]
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Cuyahoga Arts and Culture’s Board of Directors meets at 3:30 Wednesday, December 13 in the Louis Stokes Wing of Cleveland Public Library, and if you care about the arts or if you like reality television, you should go. The Board’s public behavior has been an embarrassment to the sector for all of 2023. The good news is that the terms […]
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To be polite and understated, Cuyahoga Arts and Culture has a lot going on right now. The organization that administers public funding for the arts is facing criticism from artists over the way it has handled individual artist grants in recent years, and a discrepancy between amounts budgeted for individual artist grants and the amounts actually spent. In discussion of […]
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The nonprofit advocacy organization Assembly for the Arts rolls out a new grant program for individual Cuyahoga County artists this week, supported by Cuyahoga Arts and Culture. Assembly for the Arts Executive Director Jeremy Johnson and Chief Community Officer Deidre McPherson spoke about the program via Zoom. Assembly joins Julia de Burgos Cultural Arts Center, Karamu House, and SPACES Gallery […]
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Arts funding in Cuyahoga County could get a significant boost by the end of 2023. Just before Christmas, 2022, The Ohio legislature passed a bill that includes permission for Cuyahoga County to put before its voters a revision of the cigarette tax that supports the arts. Governor Mike Dewine signed the bill January 2. Jeremy Johnson, director of the advocacy […]
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The effort to get additional public money to support the arts in Cuyahoga County is a lesson in taking what you can get. That’s been true from the beginning, but the current push to extend the cigarette tax beyond just cigarettes makes the point all over again. Counties seeking authority to tax for a specific purpose have to get permission […]
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Educators talk about “teachable moments”– those times when learning comes easily because something happens that makes information relevant. This is one of those times for people concerned about public funding for the arts in Cuyahoga County. As if to highlight the need to find something other than a cigarette tax to provide such revenue, a recent State of Ohio budget […]
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