Stitched together: How CCPL’s Innovation Center helped Kori Brightharp live her dream
Cuyahoga County Public
Library Innovation Centers: Where ideas take shape
Dress designer Kori Brightharp’s story is just one example of what the Cuyahoga County Public Library’s Innovation Centers are designed to do: Give people access to tools, technology, and a community that can help turn an idea into something more.
CCPL operates 10 Innovation Centers across its system, although the center at the Parma-Snow Branch is currently closed for renovations. The first three Innovation Centers opened in 2016, and the network has continued to grow.
The spaces function as makerspaces, but CCPL calls them “co-learning spaces.”
“We call them co-learning spaces, but staff are not experts, and we’re not designers,” says Matthew Skvasik, CCPL’s innovation programming specialist. “We’ve provided this big binder full of resources for customers to get started. We tell folks, ‘that’s kind of your entry point.’ And then, when you need that assistance, you can get staff and we can learn and grow alongside you. But you become the experts.”
Every Innovation Center offers a baseline suite of equipment and services, including inkjet printers, sublimation printing for polyester items such as shirts and tote bags, direct-to-garment printing on cotton and staff-assisted 3D printing. Adobe Creative Cloud is also available free at every location.
More specialized equipment—including laser cutters, CNC (Computer Numerical Control) machines, 10-needle embroidery machines, and water jet cutters—is distributed among the branches. Warrensville Heights serves as the system’s textile arts center.
The centers are popular. Last year, CCPL staff logged close to 15,000 users and saw approximately 1,800 3D print jobs completed.
Getting started
Access is designed to be straightforward. Patrons take a weekly general orientation to gain access to the spaces. Additional basics classes are required for more complex equipment, including laser cutters, embroidery machines, CNC routers, water jet cutters and the long-arm quilting machine at Warrensville Heights.
Use of the spaces is free, although there are modest charges for some printing services to cover materials costs.
And while the equipment is a major draw, Skvasik says community-building may be the Innovation Centers’ greatest assets.
“If you come in and start using the space, you’re going to talk to those folks [who] are in there. You’ll develop those relationships, you’re going to geek out with that person working next to you, and she’s going to say, ‘Oh, I tried this with this,’ or ‘I got my materials here.’”
That mix of equipment, education, and community is also intended to support entrepreneurship.
The 10-needle embroidery machines at Warrensville Heights, for example, represent an investment of $15,000 to $18,000 for a private buyer. Other Innovation Center users have turned the equipment into income-producing businesses, including a dressmaker who uses the embroidery machines and water jet cutter for custom work.
“We love to see people outgrow us,” Skvasik says.
For Brightharp, however, that day hasn’t come yet. For now, the Warrensville Heights Innovation Center remains a place where she can create, teach, learn and continue building the bridal business she has dreamed about since childhood.
The Cuyahoga County Public Library Innovation Centers are open to all library cardholders. Weekly orientations are available at all 10 locations.
When Kori Amber Brightharp first walked into the Cuyahoga County Public Library (CCPL) Warrensville Heights branch, she was a young mother who had just moved back to Cleveland, armed with sewing skills, a dream and not much else.
The innovation Center at CCPL's Parma-Snow BranchWhat she found there would become, in her words, about 60% of her journey to becoming a thriving dressmaker and fashion designer.
Today, Brightharp is creating custom prom dresses, evening gowns and bridal wear, taking on Kent State University (KSU) School of Fashion students as interns and teaching sewing to teens at the same Innovation Center where she began building her business.
The Warrensville Heights Innovation Center gave her more than access to sewing equipment.
It gave her community, mentors, customers and, perhaps most importantly, a place where her dream could take shape.
From T-shirts to prom dresses
Brightharp’s path into fashion was anything but a straight line.
It began in 2013 with a simple idea.
Matthew Skvasik, CCPL Innovation Programming Specialist.“I started off designing and making T-shirts in 2013,” she recalls, “and then that's when I decided to go to fashion school.”
She enrolled at the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale, but the school closed before she finished her degree. Rather than return home, she stayed in Florida and found something arguably more valuable than a classroom: mentors.
Brightharp recalls two older women, one from Pakistan and another from Peru, who took her under their wings at their Miami shop for six years, teaching her pattern making, sketching and the full craft of garment construction.
After a decade in Florida, life brought Brightharp back to Cleveland. She had a son, her family was here and she needed a reset.
She knew how to sew. So she made a decision.
“I’m just going to make some prom dresses,” she recalls. “I officially started my business in 2023.”
Taking off
What started as a favor quickly became something extraordinary.
CCPL patrons have access to a wide variety of tools and specialized equipment in the Innovation Centers.In her first year, Brightharp made two dresses, including one for her goddaughter, for whom she charged only the cost of the fabric.
“I went from two dresses in 2023 and I made $400 that year,” she recalls. “The next year I jumped to 14 dresses and made $11,000. And then this year I made $30,000 just for prom.”
The growth has been impressive—yet not without its challenges.
As Brightharp was making 14 dresses at once, the physical and emotional toll was real.
“I was having nosebleeds from all the stress, and I have a baby,” Brightharp recalls. “At the end of the day, my health is more important, or just as important, as my career.”
She began looking for ways to grow the business without having to do everything herself.
Brightharp reached out to Kent State University’s fashion program, and for the past six semesters has hosted KSU fashion students as practicum interns. The students bring formal training that complements Brightharp’s experience.
“I didn’t finish fashion school, and to be honest, I don’t tell them,” she admits. “Sometimes they’re more skilled than I am. I’m just more experienced.”
Brightharp’s reputation has grown quickly. She has turned down more than 40 clients in a single year—a testament to the demand for her work.
Brightharp partly credits her Cleveland roots.
“I was a little popular in high school, and I feel like I kind of took advantage of that,” she says. “I was able to get my name out there faster in Cleveland. As I got older, I didn’t like the fact a lot of people know me. Now I’m like, ‘okay, it came in handy.’”
Finding family at the Innovation Center
When Brightharp returned to Cleveland and began building her business, she discovered the CCPL Warrensville Heights Innovation Center.
CCPL's Warrensville Heights branch has an Innovation Center focused on textile arts.The location is CCPL’s textile arts hub, with a long-arm quilting machine and a community of sewists, quilters and fiber artists who were gathering there even before the Innovation Center opened.
That community quickly became important to Brightharp.
It was there that she met her most recent mentor, Mrs. Bernice, a member of the African American Quilt and Doll Guild.
“When I first came into the Innovation Center, and [Mrs. Bernice] had on these African clothes, and I was just like, ‘I love your African clothes,’” Brightharp recalls. “My grandmother, who passed away, she is from Ghana, and she always wore African clothes.”
The connection deepened when Brightharp learned that Mrs. Bernice’s birthday was May 5.
“That’s literally my grandmother’s birthday,” she says. “She’s always coming to the rescue. She’s been doing prom dresses since the ’50s. I really feel like my grandmother sent her to me.”
That kind of informal mentorship is one of the things CCPL innovation programming specialist Matthew Skvasik says happens regularly at the Innovation Centers.
“We have a large quilting and a large sewing community there,” Skvasik says of the Warrensville branch. “We have a lot of knitters, quilters and seamstresses that met there organically anyway. So it was a logical place to put that space.”
Brightharp says those relationships have been as valuable as the equipment.
The next stitch
Brightharp’s sights are now set on bridal wear—a lifelong dream she traces back to childhood.
“I used to binge watch ‘Say Yes to the Dress’ growing up,” she recalls. “So that’s what I actually wanted to do. It’s like prom called me, but I always wanted to do bridal.”
The Cuyahoga County Pubic Library's Warrensville Heights Innovation Center focuses on textile arts.Brightharp’s bridal collection is already in progress, she says, with a full marketing campaign planned for its launch.
Whether she eventually moves into her own studio or continues building her brand from the library, the Innovation Center has already helped Brightharp move from dreamer to entrepreneur.
And she has some advice for anyone thinking about entering the world of fashion, sewing or fiber arts.
“Show up,” she says.
“My first year, I went to every networking event I could go to—anything that had to do with fashion, I was there; anything that had to do with sewing, I was there,” she recalls. “So you can meet like-minded people, even if you don’t even know how to sew. That’s what you surround yourself with.”
Giving back
Brightharp makes sure she gives back to the Innovation Center and the CCPL community that supported her when she was getting started.
She is now in her fourth session of teaching teen sewing classes, which have become so popular that they have outgrown the Innovation Center and moved into the library’s storytime room.
CCPL's Garfield Heights branch Innovation Center.“Every season, we’ll do sweater dresses,” Brightharp says of her classes. “I’ll teach them how to make a basic sweater dress, and we teach them all the parts of the sewing machine—the basics.”
She also incorporates pattern making into the curriculum, sending students home with traceable patterns they can reuse.
“Even if they don’t make their pattern, I have them just trace the pattern that I have so they can keep that pattern and reuse it,” she explains, adding that teaching is just another way to pass along what others taught her.
‘They are my biggest supporters’
When asked if there was anything she wanted to add, Brightharp didn’t hesitate—she wanted to talk about the Cuyahoga County Public Library.
“One of the biggest blessings in all of this is finding the Innovation Center,” she says. “Everyone at Warrensville Heights Library has become my family in this. I always think of what I can do for them, once I make it big, because they are my biggest supporters.”
“Anything that I need, you would think that I work there,” Brightharp continues. “From the reception desk to the information desk to the children’s area, literally the entire staff, the security guards, they are like family. I will always come back.”
Brightharp says she is grateful for the role the library has played in her journey.
“I get emotional thinking about how much support and help I get from everyone there, and I am big on always giving back to whoever I feel like was part of my journey,” she says. “And they, including Ms. Bernice, are probably 60% of my journey. They have been there since I’ve started this.”
