Cleveland defends arts fund amid transparency concerns
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Illustration: Allie Carl/Axios
A Cleveland program that used federal pandemic relief dollars to fund art projects in historically disinvested neighborhoods is facing scrutiny for a lack of transparency and accountability.
Why it matters: Cleveland's Transformative Arts Fund (TAF) was one of the largest direct investments in working artists in the city's history.
State of play: The program drew 103 applications. Seven projects were funded at a total of nearly $3 million, including murals in Mount Pleasant and Stockyards, an immersive theater production at East Tech and public space activations at City Hall and across town.
- Nearly 400 artists were paid $1.05 million as part of the projects and more than 10,000 residents were "engaged," per the city.
Driving the news: Cleveland's senior arts advisor, Rhonda Brown, defended the program Monday before City Council, pushing back on recent reporting that flagged inconsistencies in the program's financial records.
Friction point: A Cool Cleveland review found spending documents with "different formatting, categories and logic," making it difficult to track outcomes and compare projects.
- "Across all the reports, there is no standardized account of the number of artists paid, their demographics, or the depth of engagement, with no measurable outcomes, audience reach, attendance or media impact."
Flashback: Axios ran into a similar wall when we tried to report on the grants shortly after they were announced. Our 2024 public records request for applications and scoring documents came back eight months later with no responsive records.
The other side: Brown said the structure of the program, in which funds were routed through a nonprofit fiscal agent and seven institutional partners, explains the patchwork.
- Those partners, she said, handled payments and documentation for the artists.
- The program produced physical impacts, like neighborhood murals, and intangible ones, like downstream community investment and individual artist evolution, she added.
Case in point: Artist Latecia Wilson-Stone told city council her TAF grant was "life-changing."
- "It gave me permission to dream bigger, permission to build something rooted, permission to remember that our people's stories are in our bones."