Tuesday, May 19, 2026
Supporting Cleveland’s Vibrant Cultural Landscape
The CREW Foundation has been a City Club partner for several years and was delighted to join us for our forum on Friday, May 15 featuring a conversation about Innovation in Opera. Why come to a forum about opera when they work in film production? They were excited to meet with Terence Blanchard who has composed soundtracks for Spike Lee and was this year’s curator of The Cleveland Orchestra’s Jack, Joseph, and Morton Mandel Opera and Humanities Festival which just wrapped up.
If you missed the forum, you can check it out here.
Haven’t heard of The CREW Foundation? They are a nonprofit organization focused on building thriving creative economies through workforce development, production training, and cultural infrastructure. Based in Cleveland, the foundation works at the intersection of media, storytelling, workforce strategy, and economic opportunity, connecting emerging creatives and young professionals to hands-on training, real world production experience, and pathways into the evolving creative economy.
What distinguishes The CREW Foundation is its deeply immersive, high investment approach to training, mentorship, and long-term professional development. Rather than operating as a traditional classroom model, participants are placed into real production environments where they gain practical, industry facing experience designed to prepare them to compete within professional creative spaces. And the foundation invests in participants beyond the training period itself, including continued mentorship, educational advancement, industry exposure, equipment access, union support, and long-term career positioning.
Importantly, trainees are not simply taught and released. The CREW Foundation actively hires participants for productions and creative projects developed through the organization and continues integrating them into broader professional ecosystems. Participants are exposed to conversations with cultural leaders, business executives, institutions, and industry professionals to help them better understand how creative economies, civic leadership, and cultural infrastructure intersect.
The organization believes workforce development should not exist in isolation from the larger ecosystem surrounding opportunity. By connecting trainees not only to technical skills, but also to relationships, institutions, and high level creative and civic conversations, The CREW Foundation is helping position Cleveland as a stronger destination for creative talent, cultural collaboration, and economic growth.
Want to learn more about The CREW Foundation? Visit their website.
