Vision:  
15 year out… Imagine fifteen years from now, when our youngest students have moved through the educational system and grown up.  What kinds of lives do you wish for them?  How do you imagine arts being part of their lives then? What ways could the arts contribute to their development of those lives?

I envision a Cleveland, Northeast Ohio and world fully energized and transformed by the contagious and everlasting arts and cultural enthusiasm of our next generation of leadership, educated by CMSD over the next 15 years. I expect all CMSD students to become leaders, in their own unique ways. Over the next 15 years, each of our CMSD students will be immersed in the exceptional arts and cultural experiences offered in our world-class schools and across our region, through empowering and innovative schools and arts and culture related educational programs and experiences in our schools and beyond. I expect 100% of our students will become arts enthusiasts and 10-20% of students will move on to advanced study in arts and culture related fields and professional success in related careers. I expect all the exceptional adults advanced through such experiences here will become great supporters of our arts and culture and their peers in the field. They will all contribute significantly to the cultural fabric of this community and world, making this an exciting, entertaining and enlightening region and making this a prosperous and rewarding place to base careers and make home and raise future generations of artists and arts and culture supporters, at the core.

5 years out…  Now work backwards, what kinds of things can you imagine happening in five years to put these young people on the pathway to this life?  In homes?  In schools?  In the community?  How do you imagine the arts playing a role in this process?

The CMSD will engage the internal CMSD community, students, family and all people of the region in an unprecedented collaboration, bringing together with them all area arts, culture and technology professionals and organizations and supporters in a region-wide, innovative, ground-breaking campaign to make Cleveland a global center of arts and cultural education, creation, expression, appreciation, and workforce and economic development. Each day of the year, there will be defined programs in every school and across the community that connect students of all ages and interests, and their parents, and other youth and adults, with arts and culture and artists focused on shared, scheduled learning objectives. The community will rally to support emerging artists and arts appreciators, of all ages, by sponsoring arts education and experiences, funding student and professional arts and culture activities, mentoring and hiring students and graduates, providing scholarships for advanced education, and championing innovation within the education process and for individual artistic expression. I expect CMSD to lead a renaissance of artistic expression and related development in NEO that reaches far beyond the classrooms and transforms the region and our economy.

Priorities:
What are the three most important things that could happen in the next few years to help young people get to the five year point on the way to the fifteen year vision?  What are the three most important things that could happen related to arts and education that could help?

1a. We must build the collaboration. That must begin by mapping all the art and culture professionals and organizations in the region, and beyond, who may be enlisted to support the objectives of this steering committee.

2a. The collaboration must be educated on the value of arts related to education and social development, which should be a very easy process.

3a. Collaborators, including artists, corporations, foundations, patrons, government and arts organizations, must be rallied to support the objectives of this steering committee, through direct financial involvement, donations of goods and services, time, admissions, transportation, internships, employment, and anything else that will further this cause. A database of collaborators and resources must be developed and matched to "customers"... students and schools.

1b. All CMSD staff and educators must be convinced of the critical value of arts related to education and regional development and strength, and they must each and all become champions of innovation and excellent in this area.

2b. The education process must he adjusted to allow this collaboration to have impact, including innovating scheduling, curricula, rules, and processes, 12 months of the year.

3b. The process must be driven into homes and the community and engage all people of the region - this must be a complete social change engagement that includes intergenerational learning, family associations, off-site programming, partnering across organizations, leveraging higher learning, and nurturing entrepreneurship.

Assets:
What assets do we have right now that could help this happen?  These could be people, knowledge, things, spaces, partners, relationships, ideas, existing practices.  How could we better utilize these assets to help young people?  Which assets are well utilized right now? (Celebrate these.)

This region has so many ripe and willing arts and cultural assets and exceptional collaborators that I do not see any gaps. I do not believe any of these assets are really well utilized today, individually, and we do not have a collaboration of all these assets with CMSD with the scope of engagement proposed and possible here, so the focus must be on building this collaboration with an open mind to innovation and transformation, embraced at all levels of CMSD.

Barriers and Ideas:
What barriers could stand in the way of helping our young people achieve those lives?  What ideas or strategies do you recommend for avoiding, challenging, or surmounting those perceived barriers?  What other groups or people could help tackle these barriers?

The biggest possible barriers are "Not Invented here", "Not in the manual" or "Not my art". To achieve  innovative objectives and open collaboration envisioned here, CMSD must throw open the doors of schools and rewrite rule books to enable such practices as intergenerational learning, mentoring, internship, experimentation, and support freedom of thought and expression, often beyond the understanding of the CMSD staff and leadership. Arts and culture take people beyond textbooks, teachers and tests to individual and interpersonal explorations that can seem threatening or unstructured - difficult to grade and measure - often beyond the understanding of routine thinking. If CMSD is not willing to nurture such exploration, transformation will not occur. If CMSD will not allow innovation and innovators into the classrooms, and let students explore innovation on-and-off-site, transformation will not occur. To build consensus for innovation, panels of experts in art, culture, education and economic development can articulate the value of arts and culture in education - some perspectives should be locally-drawn and some should be brought from afar. There are many opportunities to gain such perspectives from outside experts coming to this region for other purposes - e.g. Mel Chin for the upcoming Shrinking Cities symposium - so the collaboration must think and act globally and real-time.

Your Role:
How could your group help achieve this vision for young people of Cleveland?   What skills, assets, and knowledge could you as an individual bring to this work? What would it require?  What individuals, groups, or other resources could you help secure?  What, if any, volunteers could be better tapped?

I grew up immersed in the Cleveland arts community, studied as a youth at CIA (where my mother spent her career as faculty), studied fine art at Tulane, am an active artist, am an art collector and supporter, know many area artists and leaders of arts organizations, and employ artists. I am a creative industries entrepreneur and am very active in community and economic development. I have expertise in virtual and real network and community development (e.g., I provided the CMSD School Board with the portal, in English and Spanish, to engage the community in support of the selection of the new CMSD CEO, Dr. Sanders), and provide many virtual communities in this region and beyond that have 1,000,000s of visitors a month and 1,000s of active members. I am active bridging the digital divide in NEO and bringing understanding of open source computing to the region. I intend to tap all these skills, perspectives and relationships to support this steering committee, offering 1,000s of primary collaborators I will tap, and 10,000s of secondary supporters to be brought in for various forms of support.

To help plan better for the future, please list how various individuals, organizations, and/or your group might contribute to helping young people achieve this vision in times of:  Decline (less resources), Stability (similar resource), and Growth (growing resources).

This steering committee strategy must create fresh, distinct opportunities and resources for CMSD and student, and so independently supplement other CMSD plans and budgets regardless of developments in Decline (less resources), Stability (similar resource), and Growth (growing resources). 

While I feel the need is to build a very broad collaboration, I'd like to enlist the support of family friends Agnes Gund and Peter Lewis, for their globally renowned support of arts and education and their regional connections. There are over a dozen area foundations to be brought on board - that should start with Ronn Richard, of the Cleveland Foundation, who I work with on similar pursuits. For intergenerational programming, Rob Hilton at MacGregor Foundation should be enlisted, and Peter and Cathy Whitehouse of The Intergenerational School should be consulted. There are 23 colleges and universities to engage... I contacted CIA President David Deming about this initiative and he is supportive... we need to make similar outreaches to all others. There are networks of other primary and secondary schools and school systems to involve. There are alumni networks of CMSD and all area schools to activate... CIA alone offers 1,000s of artists to tap for support. There are dozens of significant arts and cultural organizations to enlist, and they each have 100s to 100,000s of supporters to educate... they should ask patrons to donate unused subscription tickets to CMSD students and family, for example. All community leaders understand the importance of arts and culture, CMSD, and our youth, for the future of the region and assets they love - it is critical to the community that this steering committee is successful. With a strong strategic plan, the community will provide suitable support.

The next steps are to briefly articulate the vision of this steering committee and map all the collaborators who will be supportive, educate the collaborators on the vision, and secure specific support and define what support each collaborator may offer.

Disrupt IT