Press Inquiries: Ashley Shaw, ashaw@ohiocity.org

STATEMENT OF PURPOSE

The Creative Fusion - Street Art Edition will be an urban-based community engagement residency, combining six international artists with local organizations and local artists to create a series of public-scale visual art pieces concentrated in Ohio City’s Hingetown and along Detroit Avenue. This work will be celebrated through a large event engaging the public.

Important tenets of this project are to:

* Ensure that the art produced during the three-month residency will have a lasting impact on the neighborhood

* Focus on outdoor visual art as a way to create coherence across the project

* Commit to the highest quality of produced work and facilitate a high bar of excellence from all artists

* Focus on inclusion in this rapidly changing neighborhood, and find ways to encourage interaction and participation from a wide-ranging group of local residents

* Plan a public event to highlight the work of the artists and create opportunities for interaction and festivity with the community

* Test out the structure of collaboration with local artists, where each international artist is paired with a local artist who will both act as guide and as collaborator – local artists will also be supported and encouraged to create a piece of their own

* Concentrate all artwork along the Detroit Ave. corridor, and plan out sites for artwork to ensure that there is sufficient density of art to be perceived as many unique parts of a single project, and to be impactful for the neighborhood

* Work together as host organizations to create exciting, enlightening and collaborative experiences for international and local artists.

* Build in administrative inefficiencies across all artists and host organizations.

Fusing global ideas for the greater good: The Cleveland Foundation's Creative Fusion arts program deepens the city's cultural makeup

February 9, 2018

Since bright, colorful murals were completed in December in the Hingetown area of Ohio City, people checking out the artwork have been coming to areas of the neighborhood they may not have even thought to visit otherwise.

Residents and visitors are perusing local businesses, stopping in coffee shops or juice bars and walking around taking pictures of the new murals — created by international and local artists collaborating through the Cleveland Foundation's Creative Fusion initiative, an international artist residency program.

"It's amazing to see the amount of people coming in to see the murals in the middle of winter," said Ashley Shaw, economic development and planning manager at Ohio City Inc. "I can't imagine when the weather's nice how many people will be coming here."

Source: http://www.crainscleveland.com/article/201...