Arts Cleveland, the Arts and Culture Action Committee, and Cuyahoga Arts & Culture have announced the formation of an alliance, beginning in 2021.

The alliance will provide for greater impact and a unified voice for arts and culture, which will better position arts leadership to secure additional public funding. It will provide an elevated platform to offer services to institutions, artists, and creative businesses in the areas of advocacy, racial equity, and related programs and services.

The alliance will combine the efforts and organizational structure of Arts Cleveland, a 501(c)3 nonprofit and Arts and Culture Action Committee, a 501(c)4 political action committee. Arts Cleveland will sunset to pave the way for a brand-new organization in 2021.

Cuyahoga Arts & Culture, a public agency, will be actively involved in the alliance as a founding partner and supporter but will remain an independent entity, retaining its name, structure, and grantmaking.

A group of existing members from the founding partner Boards are working to conduct a national search for an executive director to lead the new organization. The search will be led by national search firm, Koya Partners, with the aim to hire a director in the first quarter of 2021. In the coming months, the working group will identify program priorities, organizational structure, a new name and brand, and finalize the board composition.

In the fall of 2019, CAC, Arts Cleveland and the ACAC engaged consultants to help the organizations consider if a formal collaboration among partners would better serve the arts community and the region. The work included study of national models and best practices; an overview of the current work of the partner organizations; a look at the evolving trends within the northeast Ohio market and national trends in patterns around funding for the arts.

Arts Cleveland was founded in 1997 as the Community Partnership for Arts and Culture (CPAC), responding to the need for a community-wide, comprehensive arts and culture plan. For more than 20 years, Arts Cleveland advanced the arts and culture community in northeast Ohio through direct service programs, research, and advocacy.

The work and executive director search process is supported with funding from The Cleveland Foundation and The George Gund Foundation.