So you think you can run an arts organization

Too often I hear from those outside the nonprofit sector complaining that arts organizations are always in trouble because they don’t know how to run things like a business. I would challenge any businessperson to stay in business if: Every year you must invent and produce a whole new product line that has not been market-tested (five...

Blooming Euclid

I have had occasion, these warm summer days, to walk outside for lunch. In addition to being able to get out of the frigid office air conditioning, my great delight has been walking up Euclid Avenue toward Public Square. Yes, you heard me – a delight to walk up Euclid Avenue. What a difference a few months make! In addition to the...

Deep Fusion

Opera diva, folk singer, classical piano virtuoso, French chanteuse, jazz improviser, new age and sacred music composer – to say that Armenian artist Lucineh Hovanissian is a musician is to say that Niagara is just a waterfall. Rarely have so many gifts been assembled in a single creative individual. All of them were on display this...

How I Spent My Summer: Joanne Neugebauer

This summer I was placed at University Hospitals, splitting my time between the Center for Child Health and Policy at Rainbow and the newly formed Office of Sustainability working on projects focused on the multiple ways food and the hospital intersect. When friends and family hear about my position I usually get two main reactions. The...

How I Spent My Summer: Graham Welling

This summer, I crossed the line from college student to young profession*]}*al. I'll admit that I was a bit apprehensive about leaving the tight community that is Ohio State, but my fears were unfounded. I've loved my experience this summer as a Cleveland Foundation intern placed in the planning department at Shaker Heights, and I've found...

Planning to shoot ourselves in the foot – again?

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 – you can draw your own conclusions about the aptness of the acronym). It’s a...

Dangerous

Is theater dangerous – can it cause riots, upset the applecart of perception, change the world? Or is it merely a fancy of the intelligentsia that art can actually counter prejudice, illuminate the dark corners of injustice, actually advance society? Who gets to decide what an artist can or cannot say or portray? Where is the line...

CLEVELAND tm: (teach + make)

Although he’s been here a few months already, Creative Fusion internation*]}*al artist Cristian Schmitt, from Chile, was just recently welcomed by the community at a reception held at the Idea Center in PlayhouseSquare. Creative Fusion, now in its second year, partners with Cleveland’s cultural, education*]}*al, and civic institutions to...

How Poetry Heals the Healer

Last week I attended a lecture and poetry reading by Dr. Rafael Campo, sponsored jointly by Case Western Reserve University and the Cleveland Clinic’s Lerner College of Medicine and the Clinic’s Center for Ethics, Humanities and Spiritual Care. Since it was a poetry reading, you might suspect the “Dr.” indicates Dr. Campo’s...

How I Spent My Summer: Samantha Steinfeld

As a recent college graduate, I’m convinced that my stress threshold has been unnaturally enhanced. Like any junkie, I can’t get to my normal level of functioning unless I have papers, events, presentations, internships, and part-time jobs to occupy my time from dusk until dawn. It is not until I get my “fix” and am completely...