donation – ARTFUL

The artists are coming… THE ARTISTS ARE COMING!!

We are so excited to announce that we have secured a space for ARTFUL.

We have leased approximately 5,300 square feet of space in the Coventry School Building, located in the heart of Cleveland Heights in Coventry Village, a well known and loved business and arts community. The Coventry School building is home to many established area non-profits, and offers a large value allowing our donation dollars to go even further. Our prime location will be an invaluable tool that will aid us in creating powerFUL relationships within the local business and non-profit community, and is a central and accessible for those living in and around the Heights.

In just under a year and a half, we hatched an idea, developed it, and are now making it a reality. We could not have made it to this exciting juncture without the continued support, enthusiasm and encouragement of our community. It has been a wonderful evolution with invaluable input from local artists, businesses, non-profits and the city of Cleveland Heights.

We now enter Phase II, thankFUL for all of the help and guidance we have received, ready and excited to move forward and create an ARTFUL space. We are thrilled to announce that John Williams of Process Creative is our architect, and he is currently applying his vast knowledge of working artist studios to our project.

Our space will house apx. 20 artist studios of various sizes and price ranges. All of which will rent for below-market prices. By giving artists affordable access to studio space and a creative environment, our community will benefit from their contributions to our local culture.

For more in-depth details on our plans, please download and read our prospectus.

Programs like ours only exist with the help and kindness of those in our community.

Without your steady, consistent donations we are nothing.

Your immediate donation will help us cover the costs of the build-out for our artists studios and our lease for the first year, as well as initial programs to support our artists and engage the community.

We have set a goal of $50,000, which will enable us to win a $25,000 challenge grant!

Founding donors will receive future benefits once our membership program has been developed and established.

In honor of your generosity, we are working with local artist, Steve Manka, to create a public sculpture that will reflect your kindness. Each donation will be represented in the final piece, and those giving at specific levels will have a say in the final design. This is our special way of saying thank you and making our community even more ARTFUL.

We are happy to be able to offer several donation options. If you would like to make a larger donation, but would like to spread your payments out over several installments, please consider choosing a monthly, quarterly, or yearly recurring donation.

If you would prefer to make a donation by check, please see instructions on our donation page.

We look forward to the continued growth of ARTFUL and will continue to work diligently and intelligently to deliver programs that our community can be proud of. Over the next several weeks we will finalize our lease application process and update you via our website and social media. If you are an artist who is interested in renting studio space, please be sure to fill out our online form so that you can receive direct emails with pertinent information.

From the bottom of hearts, the entire ARTFUL board thanks you.

Below you will find a map showing our location and some rough photos of our new space. We look forward to sharing more photos as we clean up the space and begin the process of building the studios. For more information, or to join our mailing list, please be sure to fill out our contact form.

Fiscal Agency… New Website… Interested Artists…

Have you seen what we’ve been working on? Finalizing a Fiscal Agent, creating a data base of artists that are interested in renting studio space and helping ARTFUL, and a new look and feel to our website.

What is a Fiscal Agent you ask? Well, that is when an established non-profit “lends” its 501(c)3 status to the new entity while it either files its own paperwork with the government or simply raises funds. In our case, we are excited to announce that FutureHeights has agreed to serve as our Fiscal Agent while we wait for approval of our paperwork with the federal government. This will allow us to keep our project moving forward, while giving our supporters the opportunity to make tax-deductible donations to our cause. Meanwhile, we have a group of our board members and volunteers working on our comprehensive Fundraising plan which we hope to release some time in February. For more information, please visit the “Donate” page on our new website.

Speaking of new website… have you checked it out yet? We still have a few tweaks to make, but all-in-all our new site is fully up and running! Here you will find our latest blog posts, updates about our project, contact forms and more. This new site will more easily grow along with our project. We hope you find it informative, and of course, visually appealing.

And if you missed our post over the weekend, we are asking that any interested artists fill out our special form. From the response rate, we’d be surprised if you didn’t see our post, but if you didn’t please fill out, or share the form with any artists you think may be interested in renting studio space, teaching classes, participating in shows and special events, etc. The more understanding and documentation we have of the artists who want to support ARTFUL, the more we show to foundations and corporations how viable and worthy our cause is.

For those of you who are not artists, but would like to be involved in ARTFUL, or just remain updated on our progress, please fill out our General Contact form. ARTFUL’s mission to support artists and our community will require the help and ingenuity of people from different backgrounds and experience.

Now that we have our Fiscal Agent, we will be able to move forward on many of the key building blocks for ARTFUL and anticipate 2016 to be a critical year for our project. The more help and support we receive from all of you, the stronger our foundation will be! Our Facebook group continues to grow, nearing 1,000 members now, as does our Twitter following and our Instagram following. One of the best, and easiest ways you can help us right now is to keep spreading the word about ARTFUL to your friends and family. Word-of-mouth is a powerful tool. Please share our Facebook posts, our blog posts, twitter and Instagram posts with your followers as that has a wonderful impact on getting the word out. Email people you know with links to our website that may be of interest with them. And of course, when engaged in conversations about Cleveland, the Heights, or the Arts – please mention ARTFUL and tell people to visit our webpage for more info. If you have any leads for us, please feel free to email us with info, as well.

We are looking to host an event celebrating our 1 year anniversary and launch a new program in conjunction with that. Since our anniversary is in February, we are hoping to have the event around the end of that month, but as soon as we have ironed out more of the details, we will be announcing that on our Events page.

Thanks to all who continue to offer their help and support, and thank you VERY MUCH to all the artists who have already filled out our Interested Artists form. We will keep you posted of our progress, so be sure to check our Facebook page regularly, or our blog page for the latest information.