I'm a Clevelander thanks to the Arts. It's a long sordid tale, and I won't bore you or your assistant or your electronic responder with the juiciest details. But I will steal a minute or four if you'd please keep open your eyeballs and let my words come pouring in.
I wouldn't be here contributing to this town if the Cleveland Museum of Art hadn't brought me down to dance on stilts in their annual parade five years ago. They've hired me to teach stilts every year since, which allowed me to get to know SAFMOD...an amazing collective of diverse young talent creating dance theatre with everything from modern dance and electronic music to wild costumes, sculpture, poetry, Hip Hop and stilts (of course!). Collaboration and experimentation...what could be better? Only falling in love with one of the founders and moving in. OK, so art and love brought me to Cleveland.
Longer story, kept way short: Two years ago I took on the role of Managing Director to administrate SAFMOD through incorporation as a 501(c)3. Consequently, I've learned a thing or two about the ropes of making an arts company here work. There are many wonderful people who've helped so much along the way; in general Cleveland's art community is very sweet.
Between other partnering organizations like Young Audiences of Greater Cleveland, Cleveland Public Theatre, Playhouse Square and the Ohio Arts Council (and clients like 6 Flags, Universities and Bars and Nightclubs) we've actually managed to figure out how to for the most part live and work as American artists, paying over $80,000 of our $100,000 budget directly to more than 30 local artists a year.
So it can be done. Thankfully there is some very good work to be found in the schools, touching a lot of children. Sure, we always have to hustle our asses off creating paying gigs however we can; it's still a wonderful thing to be able to chase the artist's life: a life dedicated to pursuing truth, beauty, and peaceful understanding. It offers hope for us all.
I think it did for Leon. He was a 4th grade African American boy who was in a 7 week Performing Arts camp SAFMOD and Young Audiences were doing a couple years ago. It was crazy; he missed one day because he had to go bury his older brother, who he'd watched get shot and killed. He was back the next day, playing drums, free writing, stretching, imagining. He became one of the stilt monsters for the final show, and was a real African style Moko Jumbie (stilt character)...manifesting a creature energy primordial and astounding on stage. If he hadn't had the arts as a positive channel, who knows what he would have thrown himself into. Unfortunately, 21st Century Funding for the camp dried up after 2 great years, just when we were starting to get the neighborhood kids really into it. I thought that was it.
But Leon's now at Case Elementary school, where SAFMOD gets to work him again as part of an ongoing ICARE partnership. His mind is that much more open to us already (arts encounters in early years create limber and tolerant minds), and he is going to resurrect his stilt-self and get back into the act. This little guy could've gone hard as steel, but there's a certain liquid softness in his eyes, a relaxed acceptance that I wish on more of these troubled youngsters grappling with so much pain in their lives. Let me tell you, without the arts as an outlet, there's nowhere for that kind of energy to go in school except to disrupting classroom learning.
So you see, this is about arts in the classes. It's about Leon...or the arts in general...me or SAFMOD. This is about educating people in our city to appreciate what is gained thanks to those who risk the underpaid life of an artist. It's about whether we're going to claim a progressive attitude for our city, and cherish our artists, or wait for some other, more courageous city to lead the way. Someone has to break new ground in demanding that we pay good money for a whole community of artists to be making good stuff up. It should be a right, in a land this rich. The next millennium can't be a place of racist discrimination, of sexist degradation, or religious violence. The habits of narrow-minded thinking...habits that have been all too American...must change. The millennium will be a time for all the world to enjoy sharing in each other's fascinating company, diverse as the day is long.
Who but our artists and entertainers can help us to feel comfortable, to have fun mixing it up between cultures? Will our profit minded businesses teach our children how to be generous and loving with each other? Do we want them to keep a tight rein on how cash flows through our communities? Or do we want to risk letting some real money lubricate the artistic processes...to encourage artists to come to Cleveland, to stay in Cleveland, to take risks and create things for Clevelanders to be a part of...to be proud of? We need to go in this direction, we need for the young children of today to make strides like the children of the Civil Rights movement did in shattering boundaries and inviting a less selfish worldview and a more global love into their heart. To do that they will need to find courage to convince them it's the right thing to do.
Well, our little Americans are no dummies. They see how things work: it's supposed to be all about the money. And artists don't wield cash clout. Why should the kids want to be "courageous" if that's just another word for "not getting paid." It's got to get better. I don't know where The Money comes from, or where it usually goes. It drives me crazy that one of the cluster bombs massacring people in Iraq could've secured teaching fees for our SAFMOD's breakdance, capoeira, and modern dance teachers for the next 10 years. It drives me crazy that five digit budgets go to feasibility studies and performance reports while deep artistic dreamers drift asleep because they can't imagine to taste how close their visions could be to reality...if only someone with clout and balls was willing to stake a claim to the art in these artists' hearts and demand great things, expect great things, and shower them with the resources to manifest the lurking potential. So many of us can't even dream freely because we're too hung up on a shoestring. Someone's got to carve out hefty channels and lavish enough cash to create sustainable lifestyles, to endorse active spending on and in arts projects and creative processes. It's not wasted money. It will save lives...the very essence of life, the meaning of life, for many people. If we want our city to have a life of the mind, a life of the soul, this is no luxury, this is a stark need. Hell, if it's too scary funding art as an end in itself because there's no sure way to "assess its impact" or because rigid old fools cry foul when too much freedom's let loose, at least can we make sure we can vote for money for the arts to significantly supplement the school system's too-small coffers, because that's the most win-win we can get in our day and age. You create paying jobs so artists can sustain themeselves, allow the seeds of mind, soul and love to be planted in our children, bring in relief to the teachers who are cursed with unmanageably large classes (and if you've ever been subbed out of an all-too often miserable situation, you know how sweet the coffee tastes on break and how refreshed you can be coming back to task. Teachers should not be fed up with their kids every day...they should get to see the kids excited and happy and get to love the innocence in each child) and create bridges in so many directions.
Now I've been on hiatus from all the political discussions and debates, the roundtables and taskforces. I was revving up to it all and getting off on the exciting theoreticals along with everyone, until SAFMOD's Artistic Director pointed out to me that every hour I spent mulling the state of the city and how to better use more funding directly on growing the arts in Cleveland without bloating a middle management of arts administration (I've got drafts of suggestions if you'd care to see them) was an hour not spent working to stabilize our own house. There's no job description and no fee for being SAFMOD directors, so if I'm not figuring it out and making it up, there's nothing getting done administratively. Artistically we're still soaring, but someone has to learn to do the paperwork to describe that artistry if we want to find our own funding...most funders are much more concerned with our admin that our art. I regret my absence from the talks about City funding on one hand, and on the other I feel quite belligerent and defiant that I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing. I'm teaching, and taking dance class, performing on stilts every I get the chance, going all out in rehearsal, performing... even writing the damned grants to Gund, the OAC, Kulas and hopefully soon that monster Cleveland Foundation...I don't have time to figure out how to get the levy structured and proposed and passed.
That's your job. May you find creative guidance in doing it with all urgent concern. Show us the money. We'll show you amazing things we can do with it. You won't be sorry. Peace." From Cool Cleveland reader Ezra Houser ez@safmod.com
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