Hotel Bruce

Cleveland is a town filled with doubters and evangelists in equal measure. Susie Frazier Mueller is distinctly in the latter camp. For the past two years, the enthusiastic artist has helped to spearhead Sparx in the City, a public arts initiative that places performers on downtown streets during the summer to stimulate street life and to encourage people to come downtown.

To Frazier Mueller, Sparx in the City is not just another summer event in a busy calendar, but a strategic program that seeks to “nurture an appetite” among the public, to “drive demand for arts and culture in Cleveland” and to “show why public funding for the arts is important.”

The program works like this. From June through September, Sparx is putting artists such as breakdancers, drummers and living statue actors on Cleveland streets. They’re intended to spice up the usual summer fare, such as games at the Jake, after-hours drinks in the Warehouse District and Tremont art walks.

The performers, who went through a rigorous selection process (see below), are on the street Fridays at lunchtime, and on Friday and Saturday evenings. The performance locations are well marked with sandwich-board signs, and visitors can pick up fliers with information about other happenings around town.

Sparx has had its doubters, those who question if this is a feel-good initiative worth spending valuable philanthropic money from the Cleveland Foundation, Gund Foundation and major corporations such as Forest City. One such critic wrote a letter recently to the editor of a local online publication complaining that Sparx seemed unorganized and unable to attract people to visit downtown.

Whether you’re a critic or a convert, however, it’s hard not to admire a group of breakdancers pumping old-school hip hop out into the street as they spin acrobatically on their backs at the corner of West Sixth and St. Clair on a recent Friday night. The sight makes you want to reach for your wallet and slip a couple of dollars into the tip jar. Sparx might not be the silver bullet for downtown’s problems, but it hopes to at least create some street life, interesting art and fuel for downtown businesses.

The weekend after it kicked off, Hotel Bruce caught up with Frazier Mueller to talk about Sparx in the City’s 2004 program.

SFM: I am good friends with Joan Perch, the owner of ArtMetro, a gallery in the Colonial Arcade. Joan and Thomas Starinsky, who works at the Historic Gateway Neighborhood, were sitting around brainstorming ways to enhance activity at the Arcade. How do you create visibility for it? How do you make Lower Euclid Avenue thrive?

These two teamed up with the Downtown Merchants Association, run by Mike Lang, and decided to create a special event series downtown, and to call it ‘Sparx in the City’.

Joan and Thomas asked me to be involved, and I probably said no twenty-five times! At the time, I had just had a baby, I had my own art to work on, and my husband [City of Cleveland Community Development director Tim Mueller] was busier than ever. But after they twisted my arm hard enough, I said yes.

For last year’s Sparx in the City events, we painted fire hydrants, had filmmaking on the street and a lantern walk in October. There were six monthly events in a row. We realized after this program ended that monthly events don’t create the kind of impact that events every weekend are going to have. So we decided for this year that we needed to amp this thing up to serve people better.

We also realized that we didn’t have to be the event that draws people, that we can plan our performances as atmosphere for other events already happening – whether it’s people on their lunch hour, happy hour in the Warehouse Distict, or special events like ‘Meet Me on the Mall’, the ‘Hoop It Up’ basketball tournament, concerts at Nautica and Tower City, or baseball games at the Jake.
We’re placing our performers near these special events in order to capture the crowd. We’re putting these brochures in all the sandwich signs, and a big ‘Take One’ sign on the outside of them.

The content of the brochures changes weekly, and tells people all the cool things going on downtown or in the city that weekend. We also promote local retail, restaurants and bars along with the performers. And we promote the underground stuff, like the cool comedians that are coming to Pickwick and Frolic.

SFM: It was a guy. I moved in with him, and he lived out in Strongsville, so I didn’t even know about Cleveland. It turned out that he was not for me. Then I moved into Cleveland, and I realized how lucky we are to live in this place with great urban neighborhoods.

SFM: No doubt! Then when I moved to Cleveland, people kept asking me, ‘Why did you move here from Denver’? That’s the baffling question so many of us that move here from out of town get. People don’t ask, ‘What brings you to Cleveland’? Instead, they ask, ‘Why’? This tells you how deep-rooted our self-esteem issues are here.

LC: It also goes to show we’re not doing a good enough job selling people from out of town on what we have to offer. On the other hand, many people from here also don’t understand what Cleveland has to offer. It seems to me that this is part of what Sparx in the City is about – selling what Cleveland has to offer.

SFM: Yes. I’ve talked with CEOs in the business community too, and they’re very concerned with the issues that face downtown. If you don’t think that quality of life issues such as culture at the street level, or the entertainment aspects of Cleveland, don’t matter to them, you’re living with your head in the sand. Every company with a need to attract bright talent, all of the law firms and major corporations are really worried about this.

To attract people to live here, we need to create a cultural draw in the city. One of the reasons that we started Sparx in the City is because businesses weren’t sponsoring entertainment on their own. We found in talking to them that the reason they don’t sponsor it is because the audiences lack awareness – people walk by the performers and don’t even notice there’s something going on! If there’s not a built-in crowd, people don’t even acknowledge them.

These comments made us stop and ask, ‘What do we need to do to make Sparx in the City visually stimulating’? We needed something that forces people to stop and say, ‘Wow, something’s happening here!’ So we created visible posters and flags, and put tip jars out. We’re trying to build an appetite for this kind of cultural activity; we’re trying to nurture something.

This has been made possible by a huge partnership with the city of Cleveland. Because of the number of permits that go into this, we needed their help, or it never would have happened. It also takes an army of people, a lot of community volunteers collaborating to get things done. This is a pilot program, so we can try it out, and then evaluate it.

SFM: Amazingly well. The first weekend, we had people dancing in the streets to a drum band by Johnny’s and the Metropolitan in the Warehouse District. By D’vine, we had a guitarist and a living statue artist that literally stood there for two hours without even blinking. People came down to go to the Blue Point Grille, and they stopped to watch the statue artist. I walked from the Warehouse District to Gateway on the opening night; I found that you couldn’t get more than a block or two before you heard the next performer – that’s how much we had going on.

SFM: Some people were amazed that it was happening, and they had come down for some other event. But we also had people that had come in from places like Lorain just to see Sparx in the City. Those families were spending money while they were there, and this helps the local businesses.

One of the things we’re planning do to evaluate the program’s success is survey downtown businesses, the public and the corporate members that are a part of Downtown Cleveland Partnership. We want to capture their feedback; we want to know if this is the kind of activity they want to see downtown. Ultimately, our goal is to build a program that doesn’t require us to fundraise, because there’s demand. If it becomes something that people expect – if it’s a part of the summer to go downtown to see entertainment – then the merchants will find a way to make it happen. The surveys will give us info on how Sparx is being consumed, how it’s augmenting the downtown experience, what people would like to see more or less of.

SFM: Kelly Blazek from Downtown Cleveland Partnership spent the better part of six months collecting a calendar of summer events – outdoor events, concerts, conventions, as well as smaller events such as the art walks in Tremont. That way, when we were developing a schedule, it wasn’t haphazard; we knew there was a crowd there. We do this in order to help bring a crowd to the event. For instance, there are two shows opening up at Playhouse Square tonight, and there will be Sparx performers there.

We also have some unusual partners, like the sports teams. Who would have thought that sports organizations would have any interest in teaming up with the arts! But the Cleveland Indians are very pumped about this. For about seven different weekends this summer, we’re putting our acts on their plaza to get their fans excited as they walk in.

LC: You have a wide range of artists on the roster. How did you put it together?

SFM: We really have some amazing acts this year. We have a group of guys that came together just for this that have training in dance, singing, rap and mixing. They’re called the Fantastics, and one of the guys was a member of ‘Stomp’ in Boston. They’ve literally assembled a Stomp-like act in Cleveland. They’ve got trash cans, coffee cans upside down and beer bottles that they use for percussion!

When we selected the artists, we put together a team of experts – Randy Rollison from Cleveland Public Theater, Andrew May from the Great lakes Theater Festival, and Dee Perry from WCPN. We took a couple days in May, and spent hours going through 60 different acts. We literally ran them in like cattle, saying, ‘Alright – you’re next’!

SFM: We did everything we possible could – we had listings in the newspapers; we ran online listings; Cool Cleveland made an announcement; we sent hard mailings 300-400 people; we sent an email blast; and we had guerilla marketing, like distributing 5,000 postcards around town.

SFM: Our judges based the selections first and foremost on talent. Secondly, they tried to evaluate whether or not that act was appropriately ‘front-facing’ as an ambassador of Cleveland to the public. They asked questions like, were they friendly? Were they engaging? Were they captivating in some way? Were they able to be flexible with their talent?

We got some unusual results. For instance, we have a performer that plays the African thumb piano, the mbira. This instrument is from Zimbabwe, and has a sound like a cross between wind chimes and a wooden instrument. In tribal days, they played this thing inside of a gourd, which was the amplifier for it. It’s a ritualistic instrument designed for passages through major life events, like weddings and funerals. The artist goes around and talks to kids in public schools, trying to educate them about the instrument. He’s going to be on Dee Perry’s ‘Around Noon’ on WCPN. We never would have thought, ‘We need an African drum player, that’s perfect for downtown.’ But that’s why you hold auditions!

We’re also compiling a list of artists that are interested in Sparx. We plan to invite them to audition next year, and we’ll also share this list with other event planners looking to hire entertainers.

SFM: Mostly positive. Sometimes we’ll have performers that go places where the crowd isn’t familiar with their work. For instance, some of the owners and merchants were taken aback by the break dancers, even though we let them know ahead of time what was going on. We are presenting people with stuff that they don’t see every day.

LC: What do these performers do to break the ‘street culture’ you mentioned earlier – the distance between the performers and the people on the street?

SFM: There’s a folk singer named Tracey Marie, and she sings a better ‘Bobby McGee’ than Janice Joplin; people just want to stand around and talk to her between songs. The other night she walked away with $200 in tips, on top of what we’re paying her! Our statue artist is another example of someone that engages the crowd. She is hilarious, because she will not break a pose. She got dressed up in ornate, colorful garb, and stood at West 6th and St. Clair for two hours. During this time, she had four different poses, and did not so much as wink. People stopped and waited for her to wink or smile or do something. They cracked jokes and made faces, but she didn’t move.

Some of our other acts are more challenging because people hadn’t been exposed to it before. This year, we have about twenty acts. Some, like the dance group SAFMOD, are better known. Others are not. I hope that as this program grows, there will be more acts.

SFM: I think so. They’re getting anywhere from five to fifteen gigs, and three shifts per weekend. Soloists can earn $500 to $2,700, and acts can earn up to $10,000. We’re doing $20 per hour for soloists, $50 per hour for two people, and $80 per hour for three or more. And we’re hoping to raise the pay scale next year. Our budget for the entire summer is $85,000.

SFM: We were very lucky – it evolved by itself. The first summer was successful, and demonstrated that this is something Cleveland needs. It affects economic development, arts and cultural initiatives and civic pride. It’s also something that involves a lot of collaboration, and we went to corporations and foundations with this message. National City is our presenting sponsor, and Downtown Cleveland Partnership is our main sponsor; they provide in-kind support, and act as our fiscal agent. We also have the Cleveland Foundation, Gund Foundation and Dominion as top contributors. The city of Cleveland is not listed, though they are providing thousands of hours of manpower in permit processing. Because of their budget concerns, they did not contribute financially, but they’ve made it possible for us to be on the street.

SFM: No. It was shockingly easy. I’m sorry that there is a perception that it’s difficult. I think there is a very new attitude at City Hall in terms of how to make Cleveland fun again. Look at their efforts to put Malls B and C to good use with their ‘Meet Me on the Mall’ series. They said to us, ‘All of your permits are very complicated, but we’ll figure it out’. I still went through a very lengthy process, however; I went in front of the Planning Commission and justified logistics, safety concerns and other fears. We did our homework and made it easy for them to say yes!

SFM: There are two parts to the program this year. The first part is the series of weekend performances, and then at the end there’s the Urban Gallery Hop. For this event, we’re connecting five different downtown districts in one weekend. Four trolleys are being used to put fifty different galleries and studios on the map. There will also be seven special events, including the Cool Cleveland Art/Tech/Dance party and the Tremont Arts and Cultural Festival. This will take place the weekend of September 17th. It’s on the radar screen of the Convention and Visitors Bureau, which is creating a weekend package on ‘Discovering Cleveland’s Art Scene’. We’ll get some regional traffic because of that.

SFM: It has become one. My husband is so mad at me. He says, ‘Will you go to bed?’ But this is also a team effort – I can’t take credit for the program.

LC: How do you think that Sparx in the City plays into the civic discussions about public funding for the arts?

SFM: Programs like Sparx in the City are driving the demand for arts and cultural program; we’re the tail wagging the dog. The physical development we’re seeing in Cleveland needs to be teamed up with arts and cultural activity. Then, people walking down the street in Cleveland won’t just see development, but also things happening at the street level. They’ll see things improving in other ways. Programs like Sparx show the public who and what we are, and why public funding for arts and culture is important.