The Work of the Artist in the Age of Public Funding

It's all smoke

I was scrolling Facebook a few days ago, and saw an article posted by my friend Lawrence Daniel Caswell, whose feed serves as a de facto local news source; he reads, and posts, everything. The article was about changes that Cuyahoga Arts and Culture made to their individual artist program.

No one else on my feed had linked to it, even though the state of the CAC individual artist program has been incessantly debated on my Facebook feed for years. (If I receive my municipal news about Cleveland from Twitter, I keep up with the local arts scene on Facebook). Facebook threads about proposals rolled out by CAC last year were long, they were testy, they were passionate. They led to panels at the Happy Dog, packed affairs where the line to get a crack at the microphone snaked around the bar. They led to the public actually attending public meetings of CAC, where there were more testy debates. For reasons right and wrong, the question of individual artist funding through CAC has become paradigmatic to the Cleveland arts community, the issue that has defined the state of the arts in Cleveland over the past few years. It brought us into the same room, literally and figuratively. If I ever felt disconnected from this community, I could always count on some upcoming event to discuss the fate of the cigarette tax money to support the arts to attend, and see some familiar faces.

The ideastream article about the long-awaited, tortured decision about individual artist funding published on December 28, 2018. Lawrence was the only friend of mine that I saw who linked to it on Facebook; maybe the algorithms are to blame? As of today, I still cannot find any other coverage. There is a press release posted on the CAC website dated December 12 that outlines grants being given to non-profits, which seems to be supplanting what had been individual fellowships, but there is no mention of that. (There also is news about a new Learning Lab, which also seems to partially replace the Individual Artists Program.) I might be missing something, but I have pretty good Google skills so if I’m missing it, chances are others are as well.

Whimper, indeed.

I was awarded a Creative Workforce Fellowship in 2012. It changed my life, and led me me to change careers. I used to try to convince my friends who lived elsewhere to move to Cleveland because of it: “My county gives out $20,000 grants to artists!” In the acknowledgments to the book I published as a result of the fellowship, I thanked CAC first.

I was also rejected twice, for a project that is a version of what you are now reading, a book about Cleveland. The process always seemed somewhat flawed, but then again all such application programs are. Some changes to respond to the too-white, too-academic percentage of winners was a good idea; years of hand-wringing, rolling out new, weirder proposals was not. And the replacement program I find utterly enervating.

CAC has abandoned any application process for individual artists completely; instead, they are giving the funds to other arts non-profits to distribute as they see fit. This means individual artists cannot apply for any transparent, open grant, no matter how problematic the application process; instead, smaller groups, who all receive CAC funding for operating expenses, decide who will receive the spoils. I suppose some of these arts organizations might hold open applications from individuals, but it seems that would require another application process, one run by non-profits staffed by distinctive personalities with particular creative preferences, that also have smaller budgets and abilities to ensure fairness and transparency for any open call. (Also, none of the groups receiving the funding are literary, so it seems writers are left out in the cold).

I wrote about the Creative Workforce Fellowships waaaay back in 2014. After the piece dropped, I received an angry phone call from an arts reporter at the Plain Dealer, who accused me of unethical journalism because I did not disclose I had received a fellowship. “If I am writing about something that I have been involved with, I take it to my editor or publisher first to see if I have a conflict of interest; you needed to do this too,” he informed me.

I was…taken aback. It seemed like punching down; at that point, the annual budget of my then eight-month old publication was maybe $10,000 Also: I was the editor and the publisher! And it wasn’t even journalism! Point was, nerves were struck. How we wrote about this program mattered.

No longer, it seems?

I have many opinions about this new direction that CAC has taken; I also have many, many opinions about an unhealthy reliance by artists on civic and non-profit funding in Cleveland, but you will have to wait for “Non-Profit Industrial Complex Month” (currently scheduled for March) to hear those rants. For now, I’m focussed on how we find out about things in town. Why has there been so little reaction to the resolution to this endlessly contested issue? Have we simply created more fiefdoms in the name of being more open and inclusive, and thus successfully tamped down public outcry? Is this simply hegemony in action?

I am resigned to, not surprised by, the lack of coverage of CAC’s decision (here’s to the incomparable David C. Barnett), though I wish it were otherwise. (One answer to that question is simply too painful). I am flummoxed, though, by the lack of social media chatter and reactions. Seems I miss reading annoying comments by the usual suspects on Facebook!

I work in the arts in Cleveland. None of my company’s budget comes from non-profits or municipalities. The revenue for my business does not depend upon boards of directors or executive directors in this city, although much of what I produce is related to the goings on in this and other cities. As a result, I feel a freedom many people who work in the arts here do not. I feel relief, daily, that I am not so beholden. Self-censorship on top of a contaminated brownfield is no ground upon which to build creative expression.

Image credit: Adrift by Amy Casey