In Cleveland, a number of ongoing initiatives, targeted projects and seasonal events create and maintain the urban fabric. Current projects often begin as responses to the vacant land crisis and economic restructuring. However they constitute a cultural infrastructure that goes beyond reacting to crisis. This grounded civic art is as integral to connecting Cleveland to its citizens as the city’s grand traditions of civic art and its mighty industrial past. Visual documentation presents these activities at the level of experience and reaches a wider audience, establishing a pedagogy oriented towards recognizing how the city is inhabited and becomes home.
The collection opens with three continuing photo-documentation projects:
1) Re-imagining Cleveland, a vacant land initiative implementing community based strategies for reuse and reclamation since 2009.
2) Design/ReBuild, a KSU design studio designing, renovating, and marketing a vacant home in the St Clair Superior neighborhood beginning in 2014
3) Citywide Cleanup, a community clean-up event in the Stockyards neighborhood held 2 May 2015.
