News

Aiming for Inclusive Community Renewal, One Cleveland Artist at a Time

Related

Share

This op-ed originally appeared in the Cleveland Plain Dealer on May 1, 2019.

By Tracie D. Hall, Director, Culture Program

Artists and community leaders gather in clusters in St. John’s Episcopal Church in Ohio City. One group listens closely as Jim Walker of Big Car Collaborative in Indianapolis takes questions about his organization’s ambitious efforts to remediate abandoned homes and sell them at below market rate to low-income artists and workers in the neighborhood. A representative of a local arts organization chimes in enthusiastically, “Imagine what that would look like here.” Everyone nods in agreement.

Cleveland, like many major cities in the Midwest, is undergoing a renewal. And with change comes the challenge of making sure longtime residents remain central to the landscape.

Amanda King does this through Shooting Without Bullets, the youth photography program she founded to provide young people with the skills and means to produce and frame their own images and narratives. Daniel Gray-Kontar uses Twelve Literary Arts Inc. to cultivate the voices of young poets of color and to chronicle their lived experiences in areas of the city like Collinwood, East Cleveland, and Lorain-Denison where new development and rising housing costs are slowly bringing demographic shifts.

The work of King and Gray-Kontar is emblematic of a wave of artists and creative entrepreneurs in Cleveland who are generating new models of inclusive community renewal. The critical role that artists and arts organizations are playing as civic leaders and influencers is what prompted The Joyce Foundation to bring our second annual “Artist as Problem Solver” summit to Cleveland recently.

Read the full piece here.

About The Joyce Foundation

Joyce is a nonpartisan, private foundation that invests in evidence-informed public policies and strategies to advance racial equity and economic mobility for the next generation in the Great Lakes region.

Related Content

Grantee Spotlight

They Got NEXT — Chicago Sinfonietta Celebrates 35 Years

During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Chicago Sinfonietta, like so many organizations, was forced to reimagine itself, pivoting programming and performances to a fully virtual space.

Grantee
Chicago Sinfonietta

News

Joyce Awards Information Session

Culture director Mia Khimm and grants manager Lynne Wiora discuss the Joyce Awards program and the application process. LOIs are due on September 12, 2022. New applicants should create accounts by September 7, 2022.

News

2022 Joyce Awards Announcement

Five innovative new projects by pioneering artists of color spanning the visual, performing, and multidisciplinary arts that engage diverse communities in Chicago, Detroit, Indianapolis, and Minneapolis-St. Paul will receive this year’s annual awards.

News

The “Full-Circle” Moment of Nick Cave and Forothermore

Recent work by Internationally acclaimed, Chicago-based artist and Joyce Awards winner Nick Cave.

Grantee Spotlight

Congo Square Play Promotes Healing, Catharsis in Chicago

Congo Square Theatre is an ensemble dedicated to producing transformative work rooted in the African Diaspora. For 20 years it has committed to telling stories by and for Black people.

Grantee
Congo Square Theatre Company

News

Groundbreaking Lyric Opera Show Led by Two Joyce Award Winners

Profile on Joyce Award Winners Terence Blanchard & Camille A. Brown involvement in new Lyric Opera show

Grantee Spotlight

Building collective power through research

Black Researchers Collective was founded in 2019 with a mission to train and equip communities with the research tools necessary to be more civically engaged and policy informed.

Grantee
Black Researchers Collective

Grantee Spotlight

The nation’s first Black arts museum

South Side Community Art Center is the nation’s first Black arts museum that develops and showcases some of the nation’s most influential Black artists.

Grantee
South Side Community Art Center