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Community Development And Participation

James Levin, Ingenuity Festival of Arts and Technology, Cleveland

Nominated By: Cleveland Public Theatre

View video tribute (8:30 minutes, 33M)

For more than 25 years, James Levin has been on a mission to make Ohio a more conscious and compassionate community by making, fostering and supporting ground-breaking theater. He believes that Northeast Ohio deserves a rich and diverse cultural landscape that celebrates diversity and that art should be done in the city in vibrant, vigorous, urban neighborhoods. Levin carried through on these beliefs by founding Cleveland Public Theatre, an organization that started with free Shakespeare in the Park and now encompasses two beautifully renovated theater spaces that support original, innovative and high quality theater, dance and art performances each weekend in the heart of the Detroit Shoreway district, an emergent urban neighborhood on Cleveland's West Side. He continued beyond founding the theater, working hard to reinvent the neighborhood around the theater through his visionary leadership in the Gordon Square Arts District. He has broadened his vision to embrace the whole of Cleveland by founding Ingenuity, an energetic festival of arts and technology that takes place annually throughout Cleveland. Levin is not only a theater artist and visionary leader in the arts community; he is also a lawyer and political activist who believes injustice, equality and grassroots efforts. He leads through action by demonstrating that artists need not stand outside of the political system, but should remain actively engaged in our community personally, politically and artistically. For dedicating his life to making the vitality and power of the arts available in innovative ways, Levin is highly deserving of the Governor's Award for Community Development and Participation.