The Transformative Arts Fund, Works In Progress: The State of an Enormous Investment in Cleveland, through Artists

In the past several months, various Cleveland neighborhoods and communities have begun to benefit from seven projects awarded nearly $3 million in total last year through the  City of Cleveland’s Transformative Arts Fund (TAF). The money came from the federal American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), a response to the Covid pandemic. During a short application period in 2024, 103 proposals were submitted for the grants, and Mayor Justin Bibb and Cleveland City Council announced the winners last July.

Led by Cleveland artists and their institutional partners, the teams “will create innovative, thought-provoking, and inclusive public art” and events, according to Mayor Bibb’s office and the TAF Committee. All projects must be completed by September 30, 2025.

“Through deeply rooted, place-based practices that elevate community voices and illuminate local narratives, these artists are doing more than creating art—they’re building bridges, sparking dialogue, and reimagining what art in the public domain can be,” said Rhonda K. Brown, senior strategist for arts, culture and creative economy for the city. The grants range from $312,000 to $482,000, and represent some of the City’s largest investments directly benefiting the local arts community.

“Over the next several months, their work will unfold through public activations, neighborhood workshops, and community-led experiences—inviting residents across Cleveland to connect, create, and witness the transformative power of art rooted in place,” Brown said.

Here is a brief summary of each of the seven winning artists, their teams and their projects:

For Art’s Sake® – Empowering Diverse Creatives, Our City & the Youth
Lead Artist: Kumar Arora
Institutional Partner: Campus District

Kumar Arora and his For Art’s Sake® (FAS) team present eight activation sessions, each addressing a different social impact, ranging from Black maternal health to physical and mental health.

“Our goal is to work with as many artists as we can find, so while we act as directors, about eighty percent of our total funding is going towards small businesses and artists,” Arora says. “Our mission … is to empower the next generation of artists.”

From February through May, Artists Run the Streets highlighted six Black artists from Cleveland whose works were displayed throughout Cleveland City Hall. “It was an opportunity to celebrate and empower them and give them a launching pad for their careers,” Arora says.

In April, The World is Yours: Art and Advocacy for Black Maternal Health featured a public basketball court renovation at the Otter Playground on East 82nd Street. Supported by the Cleveland Cavaliers and University Hospitals, the project includes a permanent mural by lead artist Glen Infante. “Black maternal health is a national problem, but especially here in Cleveland,” Arora says. “So we want to advocate for Black mothers … and make sure that their pleas are heard.”

On May 17 and 18, FAS will present a modular, moveable mural during the Cleveland Marathon to promote art and physical health.

On June 23, the focus will turn to mental health when FAS holds a chess and art event with Cleveland Guardians player Steven Kwan at the Baseball Heritage Museum at League Park.

In August, For Art’s Sake will hold a Makers Market during Machine Gun Kelly Charity Day, including Asphalt Art & Art Walk and Celebrity Charity Softball Game, also at the Baseball Heritage Museum. In September, they will conclude with the Finale Community Art & Music Festival.

9413 Sophia Avenue: A Choreographed Deconstruction and Performed Maintenance of the Built Environment
Lead Artist: Malena Grigoli
Institutional Partner: Redhouse Architecture

Part ecological construction experiment, part art installation, Malena Grigoli’s project was inspired by the young architect’s interest in learning more about the life cycle of work materials and structures in residential settings.

“I’m interested in looking at what that means for the community and the cultural, social implications for the active nature of the built environment,” she says. “That’s what led me to reach out to Christopher Maurer from Redhouse Architecture, who has been working on developing a process called biocycling where he can take demolition waste and turn it into a new building material using mycelium.”

The process employs demolition waste materials that are broken down and combined with mycelium, a fungus, naturally adding industrial-level strength that binds the substances as it grows. The combined components can be compressed into new building materials that are cut into bricks or used as insulation.

Located in Cleveland’s Buckeye-Woodland neighborhood, the circa 1900 house at 9413 Sophia Avenue sat idle for many years in the thriving factory community. By 2023, it had fallen into disrepair and was condemned by the city. Cuyahoga Land Bank, the parcel’s current owner, sought a contractor skilled in alternative demolition methods to deconstruct the house in October 2024.

Grigoli and her team have been working to demonstrate the effectiveness of biocycling and the efforts of Cleveland communities to revitalize vacant structures and reuse existing materials. Instead of simply bulldozing one of the last houses on the street, the process required carefully sorting the debris into non-compostable and compostable streams, so the wood and other compostable materials could be biocycled.

Grigoli’s team has been proactively engaging the community as they walk past the property, at local establishments such as the corner bar, and at gatherings on the site every third Saturday of the month. There will also be workshops explaining “mycotecture,” or the use of fungal organisms to shape the built environment, from 11 am to 3:30 pm Saturday s, May 17 and 24 at Redhouse Workshop.

The final project will leave an artistic installation on the park-like site, indicative of the house’s transformation, providing the neighborhood with a spot for respite.

All My Babies Birthing the Afrofuture
Lead Artist: Jameelah Rahman
Institutional Partner: Cleveland Clinic—Langston Hughes Community Health and Education Center

Jameelah Rahman’s project centers around applying Afrofuturism and art to bring awareness to the issues of poor maternal and infant health outcomes for Black women. She was inspired by a close friend who experienced difficulties with her first pregnancy and was treated poorly by the medical professionals she encountered.

“We know here in Ohio and around America that Black women have trouble being heard by medical professionals,” Rahman says. “We’re using Afrofuturism along with videography, visual art, line dancing, different art mediums to see how we can help mothers tell their stories to empower them but also to empower fellow women.”

Rahman and her team, which includes her “visionary partner” Errin Berry-Weaver, have held several activations at the Langston Hughes Community Health and Education Center. On the last Saturday of each month, the artists lead the approximately 150 to 200 participants through activities creating art pieces, including waist beads and a community quilt made of squares created by the attendees.

For their culminating event, tentatively scheduled for Wednesday, September 17, Rahman says they will display the art created at their events. The location still needs to be confirmed, but she is hoping for Mall C downtown.

“Errin and I have known each other since I was 15, and we’ve been discussing Black maternal health for a long time,” she says. “We understand that working collectively with other people already on this journey will help us be the start of change.”

Rahman has been dancing ever since she graduated from the Cleveland School of the Arts. Today, she is a member of the Mojuba Dance Collective (Mojubadance) and has performed at Cleveland Public Theatre and Karamu House, where she has appeared in the latter theater’s production of Black Nativity for the past five years.

IMPART216: Breathing Creativity into Community
Lead Artist: Robin Robinson
Institutional Partner: Ingenuity

For her IMPART216 project, Robin Robinson is working with twelve artists in teams of two to create six murals for a cluster of buildings, including the public library and six retail spaces at the corner of East 140th Street and Kinsman and Union avenues in the Mt. Pleasant neighborhood. The murals will be highly visible to pedestrians and motorists.

The six two-person teams include an established local muralist, Robinson says, and an artist who has not painted murals before, but is interested in learning the process. Those muralists-in-training will also be directly involved with the community engagement process and the city government component for design review and approval.

“We’re working with New Point, which is the new Mt. Pleasant Community Development Corporation (CDC),” informs Robinson, executive director, Sankofa Fine Arts Plus. “We wanted to work in Mt. Pleasant because it is a very neglected area that has a rich history but has had a problem identifying and branding itself. Our murals will be a spark to get that identification and rebranding process launched.”

The initial part of the project that Robinson expects to continue into June requires repairing portions of the old buildings before murals can be applied. Coating them with industrial weatherproofing varnish will protect the murals from the inclement weather conditions in Cleveland.

“We’re doing a lot of community engagement with the library and the CDC,” Robinson says “We have distributed a survey amongst the community so that they can give us their feedback, and we’ve had already several engagements to let the community know what we are doing and keep them involved in the decision-making process about the murals.”

The murals will be painted during June and July, with an unveiling ceremony planned for Saturday, August 16. “We’re thinking about closing down a portion of Union Avenue for a community-wide block party to celebrate the unveiling of the murals,” Robinson concludes.

Storer Ave. Phoenix Project: Murals to Uplift the Human Spirit
Lead Artist: Ariel Vergez
Institutional Partner: Metro West Community Development Organization

For Ariel Vergez, art can bring transformative change to a neighborhood. His vision of art for his team’s TAF project will enhance and uplift several neighborhoods along Storer Avenue by creating an Art Garden that runs through Ohio City, Clark-Fulton and Stockyards, and features murals and sculptures.

He and his team are working closely with Councilwoman Jasmin Santana as their community partner, and her Ward 14 is matching a portion of the funds to provide green spaces and other amenities. They are combining their efforts, Vergez says, so the project will have a bigger impact on those neighborhoods, especially since Storer Avenue has been neglected for a while. He also believes developing more local artists who can create murals or sculptures is the key to making neighborhoods more attractive.

The project has five primary objectives, starting with training the local artistic talent. Their No Pressure, No Diamonds program guides local artists involved in the project through the mural-creation process, from sketching in the studio to painting a wall. The second objective, then, is having the murals become the fruit of that training and education.

Incorporating the “feels like forever” element of sculpture is the third goal. “It’s important that we provide the catalyst and symbol of long-term investment that monumental sculptures represent, since they will reside in some of the empty lots in that area,” Vergez says.

Fourth is creating a community that partners with the Julia De Burgos Cultural Arts Center on Archwood Avenue and the Cleveland Museum of Art’s Creative Arts Center (Centro de Artes Comunitarias) on West 25th Street. Working with Councilwoman Santana, they will use those locations to speak directly to the community and share skills, have events and celebrate some of the project activities that are happening.

And the last, Vergez says, is recognizing the successes that are occurring with the project: “We want to celebrate the beginning of the Art Garden and ensure that it keeps growing as a healthy garden would.”

Portals of Knowing
Lead Artist: Latecia Delores Wilson-Stone
Institutional Partner: Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority

Latecia Delores Wilson-Stone has been leveraging her passion for theatre and community to create an immersive theatre experience for her Central neighborhood community. Her TAF project will transform hallways and the stage space at East Tech High School, making the entire area into a stage that allows audience members to become part of the story.

Built from extensive interviews with community members and through devised theatre exercises, the performance will invite audience members into the family household of a mother with two teenagers and an eight-year-old child. The play will reveal the dynamics of what life in that home looks like in real time, Wilson-Stone says, while the family is on a healing journey in the midst of all of the systemic pressures happening in their lives.

“I am a former resident of CMHA and also from that area, so I am in partnership with CMHA, and we have programming that we do at Outhwaite,” explains Wilson-Stone, who is also a theatre educator in East Cleveland and founder/artistic director of Asè Theatre Project. “We’ve been collecting stories from the community so that they see a reflection of themselves.”

Because the performances will be immersive and require participation from the audience, community members have also been involved in rehearsals to prepare the cast for the interactive shows. The final production will be held at East Tech from Thursday, July 10 through Sunday, July 13. Wilson-Stone and her team will then invite other community partners to view performances so that they can experience the immersive performance, a community-driven project that has not been done before, she says.

Individuals from the community who have shared their stories will also receive family portraits. “You get a family portrait for free, and we will have them framed so that everyone gets a family heirloom,” Wilson-Stone says. “I’m big into ancestry and family history, so we’re incorporating that because theatre does disappear after it’s presented, so we want to make it last beyond that weekend.”

For Those Who Call Here Home: Transforming AsiaTown with an Outdoor Community Space
Lead Artist: Jordan Wong
Institutional Partner: The Sculpture Center

By the time Jordan Wong and his team of artists are finished with their TAF project in September, they will have transformed a former Dave’s Grocery Store parking lot into a beautiful public park distinguished by colorful, engaging art.

“The AsiaTown community has been using that space for different neighborhood events and place-making,” Wong says. “Our project is very much focusing on these new public artworks and installations that tie into the needs the community has voiced for quite some time and contributing these elements to a future permanent park that is in the works.”

That’s why the opportunity to address a glaring deficiency in a neighborhood that is so dear to him has been personally and professionally rewarding to Wong. He and his team, which includes Grace Chin, executive director of The Sculpture Center, heard similar responses and concerns during several community engagement sessions.

The plan includes five large installation elements, two of which will be installed permanently before TAF ends. The others will be incorporated later because they have to account for future construction and landscape design.

The first major component is an entrance gate for AsiaTown that will become a significant landmark welcoming visitors into the neighborhood. This was another element requested by the residents. The gate will feature Chinese and Asian elements such as circular moon gate portals, Wong says, along with interactive spinning panels and several traditional Asian characters and symbols. The Chinese characters represent perseverance and endurance, happiness, longevity, good fortune as well as peace and safety for the neighborhood.

Additional installations include an artful light box to bring more light at night, seating areas and ornamental planters, and three outdoor ping pong tables that will have die-cut steel nets and vinyl artwork and graphics. The durably constructed tables will be available for use year-round.

“As demanding at the project is, I am grateful to be entrusted with these TAF funds and to lead the vision of this project,” Wong concludes. “I am also honored to be working with such great partners as The Sculpture Center, MidTown Cleveland, and OCA Greater Cleveland Chapter.”

Watch CAN Journal online for updates in individual projects as they come to fruition during the coming months.