Groundworks Dance Theater recently presented an original work choreographed by Lynne Taylor-Corbett that featured rousing Broadway-style choreography set to the music of the 80s band the Pretenders.

The show wasn't exactly what comes to mind when one thinks of contemporary dance, and audiences loved it. Groundworks General Manager Beth Rutkowski says her organization is using performances like this to reach new audiences in Cleveland.

"There are a lot of people who say, 'I'm not really a modern dance person and modern dance is weird,'" says Rutkowski. "Yet if we're able to get them in the door, they find our work is extremely accessible. It's getting past that barrier."

Connecting diverse, new audiences to Cleveland's rich arts and culture groups is the purpose of Engaging the Future, an initiative by the Cleveland Foundation to help arts organizations think differently about how to grow their audiences.

"It's about more than just putting butts in seats," says Rutkowski. "We're looking at ways to engage different people and a more diverse audience. Audiences for many arts organizations in Cleveland are getting older and are for the most part white. We want to look at new ways of thinking and share best practices."

Some of the new ideas Groundworks is considering include collaborating with other groups; stressing a more interactive relationship with its audience; offering performances online for younger audiences that want to "self-curate"; hosting evening gatherings of creative individuals, including entrepreneurs, to explore the relationship between art and creativity; and developing a series of videos called "It's Your Move" that connect dance to regular, everyday body movements.

Engaging the Future recently released a survey and hopes to glean audience information from it that will help organizations to chart a course in the future.


Source: Beth Rutkowski, Kristin Puch
Writer: Lee Chilcote

Before a packed house at Severance Hall, Cleveland Foundation President Ronn Richard touted the city's accomplishments in becoming a hub of innovation and taking bold steps to address big problems at the foundation's annual meeting this Tuesday.

Waxing poetic on the gilded stage for a moment, Richard harkened back to the foundation's early days in the 1910's as a time of tremendous innovation in Cleveland. "I still wonder if the past might be prologue," he mused, noting that the foundation's centennial is just two years away. "Can we envision the spirit of a second renaissance in Cleveland?"

Richard also posed a challenge to civic leaders to remain focused on true economic development and social change within the city. "Physical development, as wonderful as it is, must be coupled with investment in people and placemaking," he said, noting that the building spree of the 1990s was too focused on bricks and mortar projects. "We need to invest in connecting communities."

Among the foundation's projects, Richard touted the Cleveland schools plan that recently passed the state legislature, ongoing investments in high quality urban education, economic development programs such as the HealthTech Corridor and the Evergreen Cooperatives, and programs to connect new audiences to the arts.

Richard also told the audience that later this year the Cleveland Foundation will unveil a new microlending program for entrepreneurs seeking loans under $50,000 to help spur job creation and assist the creation of startups.


Source: Ronn Richard
Writer: Lee Chilcote

The Cleveland Carbon Fund has announced three grant awards totaling $15,000 for 2012, including an ambitious effort to increase the number of bike commuters in Cleveland, a backyard composting initiative in Tremont, and a project to make homes in the Central neighborhood more energy-efficient.

Bike Cleveland's project, Creating a Mode Shift, will provide riders with the tools, tips and advice on how to commute to work in Cleveland. The effort includes a commuter challenge in which individuals and teams can compete and win prizes, a guide to navigating bike commuting, and outreach to employers to help incentivize more employees to ride to work.

Tremont West Development Corporation will initiate a Residential Composting Program that will distribute bins to local residents, encourage participants to reduce their waste, and track how much is saved from landfills. The program is offered in partnership with the Cuyahoga County Solid Waste District.

Burton Bell Carr Development Corporation's project, Heritage View Model Block Sustainability Program, will make homes in the Central neighborhood more energy-efficient by switching out incandescent bulbs for compact fluorescent bulbs, adding sink aerators, and installing low-flow shower heads.

The Cleveland Carbon Fund was created in 2009 by the City of Cleveland, Green City Blue Lake Institute at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, Gund Foundation, Cleveland Foundation and Cleveland Clinic. Its goal, as Carbon Fund Fellow Joanne Neugebauer puts it, is to "think globally, green locally." The Carbon Fund is the first community-based, open-access fund in the U.S.


Source: Joanne Neugebauer
Writer: Lee Chilcote

Born David Harrill in Mayfield Heights, "Dee Jay Doc" relocated with his wife to the Glenville neighborhood. By helping area youth write and record music, Doc is able to merge his professional talents with his passion to cultivate a better future for the children. Now, giving back to his community and city is his living.

Santina Protopapa is a self-professed high school "band nerd" who learned about hip hop while organizing a Rock Hall conference, then used it as a launching bad to start her own arts nonprofit.

Ten years later, the Progressive Arts Alliance (PAA) serves more than 1,000 students across Northeast Ohio every week through hip hop arts education.

"Our students have really grown to be leaders through hip hop," says Protopapa, a percussionist and DJ who teaches rap, hip hop, dance, film and animation. "Teachers are excited because they have no way to present this stuff in a meaningful way to their kids. They tell us, 'We could never have done this without you.'"

Last month, the PA All-Stars, a group of five high school and college students who write and perform their own original hip hop tunes, had a chance to perform on stage at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. The event was part of a program called "What's Going on Now" which celebrated the 40th anniversary of Marvin Gaye's famous album. The PA All-Stars also ended up on PBS News Hour.

"It was really cool to have the opportunity to present their work to a larger audience," says Protopapa. "Normally our shows are attended by parents."

On August 11th, PAA will celebrate its 10th anniversary with an event called Ten Years of Rhapsody at the House of Blues in Cleveland. The fundraiser will feature a tribute to Cleveland break dancing legends Project Five featuring Councilman Matt Zone, the Corporate Cleveland's Best Dance Crew crew competition, live dance performances and hands-on art experiences for people of all ages.


Source: Santina Protopapa
Writer: Lee Chilcote

CellBank Technologies offers a way for surgery patients to plan for future surgeries. The startup company allows patients undergoing knee and hip replacement surgeries to store their own stem cells for possible future procedures. CellBank recently received $25,000 from the Innovation Fund.
 
“We offer a way to harvest and store stem cells without requiring a second surgical procedure,” explains Rachel Uram, CellBank founder and president. “There are one million hip or knee replacement surgeries each year, and surgeons go in and throw out a lot of stem cell-rich tissue. In 2005, five percent of replacement patients had a second surgery that required a bone graft.”
 
Using a patient’s own stem cells in a grafting procedure is “the gold standard in grafting,” says Uram. “Ten years ago they would go into the hip and harvest the tissue and use it. There were more patient complications and it was more painful.”
 
CellBank offers a better solution. “We collect specific tissues, process and store them so the patient doesn’t need a second procedure in situations like bone graft surgeries,” says Uram.
 
The family-run business has three founders, and they have brought on four part-time consultants. They are in the process of raising $1.5 million in seed money to complete testing. The Innovation Fund money will help bring CellBank closer to accepting customers.
 
“When we’re up and running we expect to have 15 to 16 employees,” says Uram. “Everybody loves the idea.”
 
Source: Rachel Uram
Writer: Karin Connelly
 

The term "Rust Belt Chic" has been bandied about in urban journalism circles for over a decade. But lately, the connotation and import of that catchy phrase seem to be taking on a welcome new identity. A book in progress from Cleveland-based writers aims to take ownership of the phrase and help define what it truly means to live in a recovering Rust Belt city.

Communities in Cuyahoga County are recycling about 50 percent of their waste on average, Diane Bickett, Executive Director of the Cuyahoga County Solid Waste District, told the audience at the recent Cleveland Composting and Recycling Forum.

Austin, Texas has an ambitious goal of reaching zero waste by 2040, which means reducing the amount of trash sent to landfills by 90 percent.

The question now becomes: How does our region advance those goals while encouraging communities with dismal levels of recycling to raise the bar? That was the question that Bickett posed to the crowd during the one-day examination of recycling and composting in our region.

The City of Cleveland has one of the lowest levels of recycling in Cuyahoga County at about seven percent. Cleveland Heights and Lakewood hover around 60 percent, and Pepper Pike is over 70 percent. Bickett said that Cleveland and other cities could improve recycling rates by focusing on new, automated technologies, expanding organic collection, adding more recycling in public spaces, making citywide policy changes, and better educating residents and businesses.

Beyond the sustainability benefits, recycling also creates jobs. "For every job in the disposal industry, 17 are created in the recycling industry," Bickett said.

Given the prowess of the local food and urban agriculture movements in Cleveland, Bickett cited an opportunity to create composting facilities run by volunteers and community organizations that generate nutrient-rich soil.

Councilman Brian Cummins criticized the city's one-size-fits-all disposal fee and unambitious recycling goals (the city aims to recycle up to 25 percent of its waste by building a waste-to-energy facility and rolling out curbside recycling citywide). 

Cummins also promoted the idea that recycling could generate local jobs, although he and Bickett acknowledged that recycling programs actually cost cities money.

City of Cleveland representatives were invited to attend the forum but declined.


Source: Diane Bickett, Brian Cummins
Writer: Lee Chilcote

Christopher Busta-Peck first became interested in teaching others about Cleveland's architectural history when he developed summer history programs for kids as part of his job as a children's librarian.

Too fascinated to put the material down, he soon found himself enmeshed in creating a local history and preservation blog, Cleveland Area History, that has been called the voice of history and historic preservation in Northeast Ohio.

Part of what motivates Busta-Peck is the simple notion that our area's history often lies "hidden in plain sight" between modern buildings, tucked amid neighborhoods or covered up by garish additions. He also believes historic buildings are among the competitive advantages our city should trumpet.

"We have historic buildings that set us apart from other parts of the country," he says. "It's a monetary asset we need to think of when compared to other cities."

Through working to elevate the discussion about urban history, Busta-Peck hopes to make saving Cleveland's forgotten fabric a bigger part of our civic discourse.

On Saturday, June 9th, Busta-Peck will lead a walking tour of East Cleveland in collaboration with SPACES. Among the sites on the tour are a stone tannery he touts as one of the most significant early industrial sites in Cleveland and a large, once beautiful mansion that now lies hidden behind a gas station.


Source: Christopher Busta-Peck
Writer: Lee Chilcote

When the Broadway Farmers Market in Slavic Village piloted a new program to offer a dollar-for-dollar match to Ohio Direction Card customers who purchase produce, it experienced a 191-percent increase in Direction Card sales in one year.

By offering incentives, the Produce Perks program helps to ensure that fresh, locally grown produce gets into low-income households where it's needed most. Many city residents do not have a grocery store with fresh produce within walking distance of their home. The program offers a dollar-for-dollar match up to $10.

This summer, the Produce Perks program is being expanded to 17 local farmers markets throughout Cuyahoga County. The program has been successful at helping lower-income residents to overcome obstacles that inhibit them from shopping at farmers markets and boosting their produce purchasing power, organizers say.

"We know that there are more people using local food assistance programs due to the economy, so how do we get them to local farmers markets?" says Erika Meschkat, Program Coordinator with the Ohio State University Extension. "This is about improving public health, boosting local food production and creating economic development opportunities at neighborhood farmers markets."

Meschkat says that the Produce Perks program helps farmers markets to profit from an untapped market. While many suburban market managers are shocked to realize that they have customers on food assistance, too, it benefits them as well.

The program is part of a regional push to address healthy food gaps by helping low-income residents to take advantage of farmers markets. Produce Perks is coordinated by the Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Food Policy Coalition with the support of several area foundations and Wholesome Wave, a national nonprofit organization focused on access to healthy, affordable foods in poor communities.


Source: Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Food Policy Coalition
Writer: Lee Chilcote

The Orlando Baking Company, which was founded in 1872 in Castel di Sangro, Italy and came to Cleveland in 1904, has received a $1.3 million Clean Ohio grant to clean up a brownfield adjacent to its facility at E. 79th and Woodland Avenue. Orlando plans to expand onto the property, retaining about 40 jobs and creating 15 new jobs. 

The funds will be used to demolish and remediate the former Van Dorn property at 2700 E. 79th Street. The City of Cleveland is a partner in the cleanup project.

Orlando Baking sells bread throughout Northeast Ohio and around the country. Orlando recently introduced a probiotic bread that contains the same healthy microbes that exist in foods such as yogurt. The company has expanded several times in its Cleveland location, and currently employs about 300 workers.

Clean Ohio grants are provided through a competitive application process to allow for the reuse of commercial and industrial properties that are currently underutilized. Since its inception, 150 Clean Ohio Revitalization Fund projects have been awarded more than $295 million, leveraging $2.5 billion in private sector investment and creating and retaining more than 12,500 jobs.


Source: Ohio Department of Development, Orlando Baking Company
Writer: Lee Chilcote

Last fall, when the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency held a hearing on the City of Cleveland's proposed waste-to-energy plant, hundreds of protesters turned out to decry the plans.

The gasification plant, which would turn trash into energy to be used by Cleveland Public Power, would result in unacceptable levels of pollution in urban neighborhoods, environmental groups said.

Since then, the city has terminated its agreement with its controversial consultant, Peter Tien. However, CPP says that it is still studying the waste-to-energy plant as well as other options to increase recycling, reduce costs and generate electricity.

To capitalize on the renewed interest in recycling and composting generated by the public meetings earlier this year, environmental groups are now pressing the city to develop a more comprehensive plan. Ohio Citizen Action, Earthday Coalition and other groups have organized the Cleveland Composting and Recycling Forum on Saturday, June 2nd at the downtown YMCA.

“Clevelanders have said loud and clear that they want stronger recycling programs,” commented Chris Trepal, Executive Director of Earth Day Coalition, in a news release. “The urban gardening and local food community in Cleveland creates hundreds of opportunities for the productive use of compost.”

"We're hoping to bring in good ideas from other cities," adds Sandy Buchanan, Executive Director of Ohio Citizen Action, who says that the local and national speakers attending the event will provide a litany of successful models.

The public forum takes place at a crucial time, as the city is gearing up to roll out its recycling program to additional neighborhoods over the course of the summer.

Brian Cummins, a Cleveland Councilman who represents the Brooklyn Centre, Clark-Fulton and Stockyards neighborhoods adjacent to the proposed gasification plant, says that the city's recycling program needs improvement.

"The city claims this is a comprehensive system, but they haven't been able to roll it out citywide due to budget problems," he says. "We need to look at incentives to recycle, such as 'pay as you throw' fees that other cities are now using."

The City of Cleveland has stated that its goal in the next few years is to roll out its recycling program to all neighborhoods. No composting program currently exists.


Source: Chris Trepal, Brian Cummins
Writer: Lee Chilcote

This month Cleveland welcomes Great Lakes Courier, a high-energy free monthly paper that caters to Northeast Ohio's enthusiastic cycling community. "One of the things we hope to provide is a place for different groups of cyclists to tell stories and interact," says editor Michael Gill.

Scott Colosimo loves designing cool motorcycles. When he and his partner Jarrod Streng were laid off from their industrial design jobs in 2009, they decided to chase their dream and created Cleveland CycleWerks. (Fresh Water featured him in this article from 2010)
 
CycleWerks bikes feature 250cc engines, are lightweight, simply designed, inexpensive to maintain and get 100 miles to the gallon. They are quite the opposite of America’s typical love of larger, more complicated bikes. “America has typically been home to the philosophy that bigger is better,” explains Colosimo. “But the bigger bikes are not great for riding around town. We’ve actually seen a ton of people who want a smaller bike.”
 
Colosimo describes his designs as “retro-futuristic,” combining vintage looks with the new age. “From afar, they look like perfectly restored old bikes,” he says. “Then you get close and see a little bit of a surprise.”
 
After having manufactured the bikes in China for the past few years, Colosimo and Streng are in the process of moving operations to Cleveland. They bought a 100-year-old warehouse on W. 65th Street and are in the “cleanup phase” of transitioning the building into the new CycleWerks digs.
 
Colosimo plans to do things incrementally. “We’re going to have a balance of manufacturing in Cleveland and manufacturing overseas,” he says. “We’re going to start with assembly and then eventually get into manufacturing.”
 
Colosimo is now turning to Cleveland companies for his manufacturing needs. He’s hired a general contractor to source out the work, but they plan to ramp up slowly. “We want to do it slowly because pitfalls can develop doing it all at once,” he says. “We can collaborate a lot easier locally.”
 
Colosimo has hired two part-time warehouse employees, a part-time technical liaison, as well as a part-time designer and an engineer.

 
Source: Scott Colosimo
Writer: Karin Connelly

Shelley Freed, co-founder of Ashton Business Solutions, a consulting group specializing in research-based business strategies, admits that she relies on technology just as much as the next person. But amidst all the emails and text messages, Freed’s goal is to put the human touch back into ABS’s strategic marketing and positioning.
 
“I do a lot of market research and strategic research for companies,” says Freed. “I get to interact with companies’ internal teams about how customers impact their businesses. Inevitably, I end up interacting with their databases.”
 
In doing so, Freed found that many companies do not have complete data on their customers, and therefore can’t make informed decisions on how to make improvements to their customer service.
 
“Very few companies have really solid data,” says Freed. “So I started thinking, wouldn’t it be great if companies would update their records -- throw in an extra question as a customer service touch point, like, Is there anything we can do for you today?"
 
The thought prompted the creation of ABS’s Customer Service Outsource Center. “And it’s a real person on the phone,” says Freed. “People still want to be able to talk to a human being. It makes a big difference. It’s all about humanity in business, even if it’s sometimes easier to send off an email.”
 
ABS is rolling out the center, including a secret shopper service. “This, then, is more than a data bank for customer information; it is intended to be an invaluable resource that can help companies discover new and highly successful ways of growing their businesses,” explains Freed.
 
ABS has several part-time people on staff now and Freed is interviewing for the call center. They recently hired someone to lead the telemarketing aspect of the company.

“The initiative for Ashton this year is to push the humanity back into business,” Freed says. “Business is about relationships. That means getting on the phones to talk with customers, prospects and referral sources on a regular basis all the time. We’re hoping by the end of the year to have a handful of people in permanent part-time positions.”
 

Source: Shelley Freed
Writer: Karin Connelly

Fixing up an older home can be a daunting task. These days, many homeowners don't know a wrench from a pair of pliers, and even if they are handy, both their tools and their skills may be a little bit rusty.

That's where the Home Repair Resource Center (HRRC), a 40-year-old nonprofit organization based in Cleveland Heights, can help. HRRC offers how-to classes for residents throughout Cuyahoga County and a tool-loan program geared to residents of Cleveland Heights.

"We want to empower people to fix their own homes, especially now because there's such a need," says Kathryn Lad, Executive Director of the HRRC. "We teach people how to do it themselves or to hire the right person for the job."

Since the HRRC was founded out of a church in Cleveland Heights, the group has facilitated over $14 million in home improvements. Lad recalls with pride a class geared towards women that spurred a group of friends to build their own garage. The group also offers foreclosure intervention services, financial education and financial assistance programs for low-income homebuyers.

"Everybody is having a tough time right now, and money is tight," says Lad. "People tend to be doing more repairs in reaction to emergencies than remodeling projects. We help people take care of things they have to take care of."

The HRRC has an ongoing series of Tuesday night classes and is also offering a new series entitled "Practical Sustainability: New Thinking for Older Homes."


Source: Kathryn Lad
Writer: Lee Chilcote