I’ve been reading and writing a lot about sustainability in the arts recently. This includes the sustainability of Cleveland’s arts sector as a whole and of individual organizations.  But what does sustainability mean? At face value it seems to imply...

Cleveland’s great jazz saxophonist, Ernie Krivda was eloquent in his acceptance remarks for his receipt of a Creative Workforce Fellowship this week.  He was one of 20 artists who accepted their fellowship awards at the December board meeting of the...

Two weeks ago I logged in to a live webcast of a Cultural Workforce Forum held by the National Endowment for the Arts. (View the webcast here.) Its purpose was, broadly stated, to explore the condition and role of the artist in America’s real...

Members of the brand-new White House Office of Urban Affairs (there hasn’t been such an Office before!) came to Cleveland to learn from us and others in Ohio about what has worked and what is not working with the implementation of the American Recovery and...

Last week a number of arts community members gathered to welcome Karen Gahl-Mills, the newly named executive director of Cuyahoga Arts and Culture (CAC) – our county funding agency for the arts.  And for once we didn’t have to warn an incoming executive...

I’m an avid, daily reader of ArtsJournal, Douglas McLennan’s one-stop electronic newsletter that collects news and blogs from worldwide media and keeps me informed on relevant issues in the arts.  Today, the always interesting Andrew Taylor’s Artful...

Among the final sessions at this year’s Grantmakers in the Arts conference was a panel that included speakers from the Nonprofit Finance Fund, National Arts Strategies, and the Mellon, Boston and Doris Duke Foundations.  The uncertainly titled “One Step...

This is a second posting from my experiences at this year’s Grantmakers in the Arts conference in Brooklyn, but I want to start it from an unusual place – a quote by our own Mayor Frank Jackson, overheard in a recent interview on Cleveland Public Radio...