Submitted by Ingenuity Cleveland
Ingenuity is offering a family-focused event, Ingenuity at the Lake, on the traditional IngenuityFest weekend, September 25, 2021. The open-air event will focus on neighborhood connectivity and lakefront access, and will include “activated” walking paths and programming centering on South and North Gordon Parks, near the 72nd Street Boat Launch and Lakefront Reservation at the North end of Cleveland’s Rockefeller Park and intersection of Saint Clair Superior and Glenville Neighborhoods.
Working with the Cleveland Metroparks, Famicos Foundation and Councilman Anthony Hairston as major partners, Ingenuity Cleveland is building on a year-long effort to expand programming in its immediate community. Ingenuity at the Lake will feature a Lakefront Stage plus roaming performances, local artisans, food trucks, a beer garden, and a range of exhibitors with a special focus on neighborhood organizations, initiatives and community members.
“This is a unique time to be working at the intersection of events, entrepreneurship, and community 
engagement,” says Ingenuity Artistic Director Emily Appelbaum. “We’ve experienced such a roller-coaster these past 18 months, it feels really good simply to create a platform to get together and check on each other. While being as responsive as possible to changing public health conditions, we recognize the benefits of holding space for everyone who has fought and made it through – whether as an artist, an entrepreneur, an institution, or an individual – to just come out and share their work, their curiosity, their joy, and their hopes for rebuilding and building the strongest possible future.”
As part of its core focus, Ingenuity at the Lake will shed light on the Metroparks-led Cleveland Harbor Eastern Embayment Resilience Study (CHEERS), highlighting the natural and civic resources the study seeks to bolster, and activating a key CHEERS site along the lakefront next to East 72nd Street’s Cleveland Lakefront Nature Preserve. Ingenuity will showcase additional partner planning projects including Bike Cleveland’s Safe Routes to Parks initiative and an upcoming Famicos Foundation-led masterplan.
Ingenuity at the Lake will elevate local partnerships and projects which have been a focus in 2020-2021 through initiatives like Ignite! Neighbor Nights, a pop-up event series based around monthly themes including placekeeping, sustainability & food security, digital connectivity and more. Ignite! events, held 3rd Thursdays through November, have featured exhibitors like Cleveland Food Bank, Community Greenhouse Partners, Sankofa Fine Arts Plus, Zygote Press, Karamu House, Bike Cleveland, Kids Book Bank and others, many of whom will also appear at Ingenuity at the Lake. Ingenuity at the Lake will also showcase the ongoing #VoicesofCLE initiative, a public art project to amplify voices and messages from artists of color through large-scale murals and interactive works.
Additional programming will include make n’ take youth art and hands-on technology experiences, plus family-friendly outdoor activities from Recess Cle and IngenuityLabs member Rollin’ Buckeyez Foundation, known for their full-size pop-up roller rink. Other IngenuityLabs exhibitors will include Makers Alliance, the Ingenuity Ingeneers bringing hands-on activities and make n’ take crafts, and the Splice Cream Truck mobile recording studio, which captures visitor stories records them live on vinyl records for visitors to take with them.
IngenuityFest typically welcomes more than thousands of visitors the last full weekend in September to experience the intersection of art and technology, creativity and innovation. Since its founding in 2004, the event has been held across downtown, from Public Square to Playhouse Square, Northcoast Harbor to the Detroit Superior Bridge. Since 2016, the event has been held in Ingenuity’s year-round home, IngenuityLabs at the Hamilton Collaborative – a 300,000+ square foot former industrial facility in the Saint Clair Superior Neighborhood. IngenuityLabs at the Hamilton Collaborative also offers year-round space, tools and resources for area creatives through our IngenuityLabs incubator; weekly hands-on workshops; entrepreneurship programming and more.
Visit ingenuitycleveland.org/Lake to learn more about Ingenuity at the Lake, and ingenuitycleveland.org to learn more about general programming.
