I am privileged to be a judge for the Independent Shorts Awards for the Cleveland International Film Festival (CIFF) this year. This is the 33rd festival and, as anyone who has gone knows, it is a fabulous event for the city, as it grows each year. Two...

In a recent article in The Nonprofit Quarterly headlined "Four Futures," Paul Light, professor of public service at New York University, projects four future scenarios for the nonprofit sector in responding to the economic crisis: A "Rescue Fantasy," in...

On Feb. 24 at the Idea Center, Mohsin Hamid, a Pakistani writer and 2008 winner of an Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, came back to Cleveland to speak on "Literature, Pakistan and 'The West.'" The lecture was part of the annual series co-sponsored by the Cleveland...

This past Monday, I spent a very stimulating 90 minutes with the folks at Glazen Creative Studios brainstorming ways to engage the local population’s pride and confidence in the city and the region. These were sincere, smart, and committed folks who cannot...

In December 2007, the Cleveland Foundation hosted a meeting of the Arts Education Partnership (AEP), a non-political think thank and consortium of organizations supporting the arts in learning. At that meeting, AEP rolled out a major frame-changing concept: to...

“An artist with an instrument is every bit as 'shovel-ready' as a potential new highway. In fact, without some help maintaining jobs in culture in, say, struggling downtown Cleveland, there is one fewer reason to build another way to get there.” So says...

I am a member of the Cultural Tourism Steering Committee for Positively Cleveland, the former Convention and Visitor’s Bureau of Cleveland. We meet periodically to provide ideas and guidance to PC (sorry, I just can’t keep writing Positively Cleveland –...

Despite the universal wringing of hands and gnashing of teeth over the economy, recent articles in Philadelphia and Chicago newspapers indicate that arts organizations in those cities are weathering the financial storm pretty well. An article in the Plain...

I’m sure it’s the season, and maybe my eternal optimism in the face of the daunting challenges we face, but I have been looking for a few good maxims to inspire me into the coming year.  I got a great one from Rev. Otis Moss Jr., from his address to the...

What worries me is that Cleveland has been so deeply and painfully branded as a rust belt city and our collective consciousness has been bound to such an image of failure for so long that we will not free ourselves from it in my lifetime.    I had always...