MCPA's Clow selected for leadership institute

COLUMBUS — Northwest Ohio will be represented when the CreativeOhio Advocacy Leadership Institute — a new initiative designed to empower arts leaders across the state with advocacy skills, legislative insights and statewide connections — launches in May. Heather Clow, executive director of the Marathon Center for the Performing Arts, has been selected as a member of the 2025 cohort. She is one of 25 leaders across Ohio who will participate in the new program. "It's really an exciting opportunity," she said. "We'll all get together and meet with different people from different parts of the state, all which are leaders in this field and advocating for the arts." Clow serves on the CreativeOhio board as well. "I got involved with them during COVID because they were so instrumental in getting funding for the arts, really important funding for the arts during that time," she explained. "I wanted to give back." Clow said Sarah Sisser has been instrumental in getting the institute started. The executive director and CEO of CreativeOhio is the former executive director of the Hancock Historical Museum. "The idea came from my lived experience working within the creative sector, working for a public humanities organization and feeling like advocacy was not really taught. I think within the creative sector, we have unfortunately done a poor job of educating our arts and humanities leaders in how to engage in the legislative process to understand that process," Sisser said. "And that in my mind prevented the sector from really being able to fully grab its seat at the table." According to its history, CreativeOhio was previously known as Ohio Citizens for the Arts. The organization dates back to the 1970s, not long after the formation of the state's arts agency, the Ohio Arts Council. Since the arts council is a state agency, it can't lobby or advocate on its own behalf, said Sisser. "And so the Ohio Citizens for the Arts was born as a 501c4 organization to lobby on behalf of the arts council and their operating budget every other year during the biennial budget process," she said. The vast majority of the Ohio Arts Council's budget is regranted out to arts organizations all over the state, Sisser explained. "So it's the best mechanism we have to disperse public support to the arts and arts organizations throughout Ohio," she said. Up until the pandemic, that was the primary focus of the organization. And then during the pandemic, Sisser said it became evident that there was a need for a more broadly focused arts advocacy organization for the state. "So we emerged from the pandemic as CreativeOhio. Under that umbrella, we do quite a bit more than lobbying for the Ohio Arts Council," she said. The organization works at both the federal and state levels. Sisser is the state captain for Americans for the Arts which is the national arts advocacy organization so she does advocating and lobbying for the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities and for federal funding for the arts and culture. "At the state level, a primary focus is still the Ohio Arts Council, especially right now because they're in the biennial budget season," Sisser said. CreativeOhio also leads legislation that would benefit the creative sector, she said. The organization also gets involved at the local level when there's an arts funding option on the ballot. The organization has over 130 members including some of the largest arts organizations in the state like Playhouse Square, Toledo Museum of Art and the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. In northwest Ohio, the Marathon Center for the Performing Arts, the Lima Symphony Orchestra and Arts Space in Lima are also members, she said. "Basically all of our members have in common that we believe in the power of coalition in our advocacy efforts because we're stronger and have a louder, more powerful voice when we're working together so to speak when it comes to policy decisions and funding conversations because the sector by the numbers is very powerful," she said. Sisser said the creative sector accounts for more than 3% of the state's GDP (gross domestic product) which makes it larger than either agriculture and education. "Our economic impact throughout the state is significant and our employment numbers as well. I feel if we can really educate the leadership within the arts and humanities in our state to understand this process, we can really exercise that power in the conversations around policy and funding," she said. "So the ultimate goal of this initiative and one of my overarching goals for CreativeOhio right now is to raise the bar in terms of civic literacy within the creative sector." Preparing for the institute involved creating a curriculum since there wasn't any that existed, said Sisser. The institute itself is modeled after similar leadership programs such as Hancock Leadership or Ohio Leadership in that a group of established professionals within the creative sector will gather one day every month from May through October, she said. "At each one of those meetings, they'll be working through one of six modules that we've developed in this curriculum that really will help people to do a deep dive into the different intricacies of advocacy and what that means," she said. The group will also meet in different places each month including Columbus, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Dayton, Appalachian Ohio and Toledo. Funding has been secured for three years at least, she said. "We found there was a real interest in funding this initiative by a lot of forward thinking community foundations throughout the state who see the value in teaching advocacy to nonprofit leadership," said Sisser. Support has come from the George Gund Foundation in Cleveland, the Greater Cincinnati Foundation, Greater Columbus Arts Council, some private philanthropy as well individual philanthropy from Edwards Companies in Columbus. Participants will learn the basics of how the state's government works, what funding opportunities are available and how to contact their elected officials, said Sisser. More advanced concepts will also be discussed such as how to affect change around the narrative of the creative sector, how to better measure the impact of the sector and how that data can be impactful in making a strong case for public support. "Public support is often one leg of this stool that helps us to create a really strong and vibrant arts landscape throughout the state of Ohio," said Sisser. "I mean Ohio's arts landscape is punching way above its weight class." She said Ohio has the number one city for street art in the country, the number one art museum in the nation, two of the top 10 largest symphony orchestras in the nation, the second largest entertainment district outside of Broadway while also being the seventh most populous state in country. The plan as they move forward is to make sure that CreativeOhio continues to steward the graduates and convene them so they can maintain their connections. "But also we will have developed over the course of three years a small army of really well informed arts advocates that going forward, if we were ever going to look at some kind of system of change in funding or policy, we could really call on these individuals to stand up and be strong advocates," she said.