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Deconstructing and recycling a house in Woodhill. An immersive theater project in Central. Mural making in Clark-Fulton. And a pop-up park in Asiatown.
These are four of the seven projects paid for by the city of Cleveland’s $3 million Transformative Arts Fund, which put Covid-era relief dollars in the hands of artists to do community art projects all across the city. Now, those projects are wrapping up and getting ready to celebrate their grand opening. At a time when arts funding is being gutted by the Trump administration at the federal level, Cleveland is making an investment in individual artists and creative placemaking – and they’re doing it using federal ARPA dollars.
Jeremy Johnson, president and CEO of Assembly for the Arts, advocated for the use of American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds to hire artists two years ago. Through a competitive application process, the city funded seven projects with grants ranging from $312,000 to $480,000. The artists then spent a year working on those projects with community members and institutional partners. The organizers will celebrate their completion on Wednesday, October 29th from 5-8 pm at the Martin Luther King Jr. branch of Cleveland Public Library. The event is open to the public and will feature documentary films about the various projects.
These projects are especially important at a time when funding for individual artists is scarce. Cuyahoga Arts and Culture, a public funder of arts and culture in Cuyahoga County, currently does not fund individual artists directly. However, it has worked with Assembly for the Arts to create two programs for individual artists, the Boost Fund and the Creative Impact Fund, in 2025, according to Jake Sinatra, director of grantmaking strategy and communications with CAC.
Rhonda K. Brown, the city’s first senior strategist for arts, culture and the creative economy, said one of the key aspects of the TAF is that while funding was granted to institutional partners, artists led the projects. “The communities that these initiatives are placed in, many of those communities have seen significant transformation, especially those that are placemaking initiatives,” she said. “Now there are fabulous iconic markers in these communities that are forever connected to the Transformative Arts Fund. Those are really just fantastic outcomes.”
“What we’re seeing is that these projects are really strong catalysts for economic development,” she added.
One TAF project is “For Those Who Call Here Home: Transforming Asiatown with an Outdoor Community Space.” It improved a pop-up park at E. 33rd and Payne Ave. on the site of the closed Dave’s Supermarket parking lot, created in 2021 by Midtown Cleveland. Jordan Wong, lead artist for the project, says the TAF filled a void in the neighborhood. “There were really no parks or public gathering spaces here in Midtown,” he said. “Chinese square dancers in the community started using this as a practice space several years ago, and it caught on as a potential community space. Now, there have been grassroots or DIY efforts to turn this into a space where people could gather and really use it.”
Recently, the organizers celebrated the park’s grand opening with a well-attended Mid-Autumn Festival on Saturday, September 27. Community members and artists turned out to celebrate the new space. The community space includes an Asian-themed gateway sculpture, a lightbox mural that glows at night, playful seating, ping pong tables, and a basketball court, among other things.
Wong said it’s an intergenerational space for everyone. “One of the residents said to us, ‘If you build something for adults, only adults and their adult friends will come. If you build something for children, they’ll bring the whole family,’” he said.
Marika Shioiri-Clark, an architect and designer who served as the urban and environmental designer on the project, said the hallmark of the space is its flexibility. She pointed to the portable stage that was purchased by Midtown Cleveland Inc. “It’s used by the square dancers,” she said of the park. “There’s biking and basketball. People walk through here on their way to the stores. It feels like a real public space that can be adapted and used by the neighborhood.”
The long-term plan for the park is to dig up the asphalt, add grass and turn it into a more permanent space, said Ashley Shaw, executive director of Midtown Cleveland. Currently, the Salzman family, which owns Dave’s Supermarket, still owns the property, but there are plans in the works to donate it to Midtown Cleveland or another entity and create a permanent park.
The $450,000 project is part of a larger wave of economic development in the area, said Shaw. There’s a total of $62.5 million being invested in Asiatown right now, including several different public art projects, the new Payne Avenue streetscape, affordable housing that’s being planned for the Dave’s Supermarket site, and others.
Another TAF project is “9314 Sophia Ave: A Choreographed Deconstruction and Performed Maintenance of the Built Environment” by artist Malena Grigoli in the Woodhill neighborhood. Grigoli and her collaborators recycled a home in the Woodhill neighborhood that was owned by the Cuyahoga Land Bank and turned it into an installation for the neighborhood to enjoy. “It’s a place to sit and stroll, an area that’s filled with plant life now,” said Grigoli, who describes herself as a social practice artist. “It feels sort of park-like.”
The remaining five TAF projects are “Portals of Knowing” by artist LaTecia Delores Wilson Stone in the Central neighborhood; “The Art Garden: Cultivating Culture and Community” by Ariel Vergez in the Clark Fulton area; “All Our Babies: Birthing in the Afrofuture” by Jameelah Rahman in the Fairfax neighborhood; “IMPART216: Breathing Creativity into Community” by Robin Robinson in the Mount Pleasant community; and “For Art’s Sake – Empowering Diverse Creatives, Our City and the Youth” by Kumar Arora in Hough, the Campus District, downtown, and University Circle.
Johnson said the TAF is evidence that the city of Cleveland is putting its money where its mouth is when it comes to arts and culture. “The city of Cleveland is increasingly invested in arts and culture and the leadership that makes arts and culture happen,” he said. “Cleveland has always been a major arts and culture town. Part of our efforts early on was to help our city government, our mayor, our city council understand the impact of arts and culture and to invest in arts and culture. That opportunity arose when these Covid dollars were coming into the city. The decision was made with our advocacy to earmark some of these dollars to the arts and culture sector that was inordinately affected by Covid crisis. Out of that has come a blossoming of things.”
Rhonda K. Brown’s role was critical to the process. “First off, we have a point person,” he said. “That’s been a change maker for the city. I believe we’ve raised the bar and that there’s great expectations for our city and for our region, especially in light of other things happening in the national scene where arts and culture are being divested in. Here in Cleveland and Northeast Ohio, we’re safeguarding support for arts and culture. The city of Cleveland can lead the way and this project is an example of that.”
He said one of the most unique aspects of the program was to make sure that artists could get some of the money up front, rather than relying on reimbursement, which is how the city typically operates. He stressed the overall impact on the creative economy. “While there were seven artists and institutional partners selected, there were scores more that were engaged,” Johnson said. “There is a ripple effect to artists being employed, cultural businesses being employed. We’re leveraging the impact of these dollars. We employed hundreds of creatives.”
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Lee Chilcote
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