Everything goes back to the economy these difficult days, it seems. Last week I discussed the challenges facing the nonprofit sector in attracting strong leadership for the future.  Many of the challenges stem from the historic, and too often endemic, lack of...

More than 10 years ago, a respected colleague of mine, John Kreidler, then the senior arts grantmaker for the San Francisco Foundation, began talking and writing about a critical dynamic of the nonprofit art world: the willingness of arts leaders to discount...

So what’s with the clouds this summer? Have you noticed? Maybe it’s just me, but I have to say the artist in me has been amazed and thrilled by the magnificence of the cloud formations along the eastern horizon here in Cleveland all summer. These are...

On Saturday the sun was glorious and the clouds were Disney fantasy gorgeous; giant scoops of vanilla bean ice cream in the sky.  On the ground, the crowd was thinner than I remember from past festivals – but that may just be perception.  A lot was going...

In articles linked through ArtsJournal this week, I was interested to read that Philadelphia’s mayor, Michael Nutter, has announced the appointment of a chief Cultural Officer for the city and the re-establishment of the Cultural Affairs Office within City...

In its Sunday, July 13, opinion page editorial, the Plain Dealer noted an important requirement for the future success of this region in the shrinking world of the 21st century. A number of local civic organizations were chided for not moving aggressively to...

We have been conducting registration for the 2008 SmART in the City program, a free, five-week total arts immersion camp for City of Cleveland fifth- and sixth-graders. SmART is a remarkable partnership of funders, arts organizations, local artists and...

“Artists are often out in front of the words,” said Anna Deavere Smith in her keynote address cum performance at the Creative Voices Summit at Cleveland State University this week. “How do we deal with this in school, where it’s all about the words...

This past Wednesday, two days after 11 Turkish artists and educators arrived to start Phase II of a year-long exchange program between Cleveland and Istanbul, the Turkish Supreme Court overturned a law permitting the wearing of head scarves in Turkish...

It was not until I read the latest issue of the Wolf-Brown consulting firm’s newsletter that I encountered the concept of “renting an audience.” But according to Matt Lehrman, executive director of Alliance for Audience of Phoenix, this is what so many...