After months of planning, a volunteer group of Northeast Ohio residents will begin a public contest Monday to design and choose a new flag for the city of Cleveland.
CLE Flag was started by a few friends and similarly interested people to find a new city emblem that better represents Cleveland’s current spirit and is likely to be posted outside homes and businesses around town. The purpose is that.
The contest will be open to the public on Monday and will run through July 19, welcoming entries from all Greater Cleveland residents. A committee of more than a dozen local leaders and business owners, with support from the North American Veterinary Medical Association and AIGA, will then narrow the group down to a group of finalists. A public vote will then take place and finalists and winners will be rewarded for their efforts.
The group has met with City Council, and while some members have expressed support for the effort to create something more universally acceptable than the current design, others don’t see its appeal. There is (cough, pollensek, cough).
Once a final winner is chosen, the CLE flag, which is part of the august organization, is expected to be reinstated later this year, with hopes of being adopted as the city’s official flag, demonstrating support from residents across all Cleveland City Council wards. ing.
“It’s better and more impactful if it comes from the community,” CLE Flag’s Brian Luckman told Scene.
After all, a community-driven perspective was one of the group’s founding principles.
It was after a trip to Chicago that Luckman, Andrew Burkle, and others began thinking seriously about municipal artwork, which is rarely considered locally.
When they realized that Chicago was one of the few major cities flying that flag, they decided to do something.
“We were considering designing the flag ourselves, and we went back and forth with a lot of options, including 50 different designs, and we had a pretty good feel for it,” Burkle said. said. “And all of a sudden we realized we were approaching this the wrong way. This is a symbol of a diverse city, and here are three guys from Cleveland Heights designing a flag. That’s not the best approach to this. We switched gears to lead the project.”
Similar efforts have been made in other cities, with mixed results.
“We stumbled upon the Milwaukee People’s Flag,” Burkle told Scene. “It’s a great website and they had a similar process. But one thing they didn’t do was involve the city early on. So now Milwaukee has a There’s a horrible flag being raised that we don’t accept, but people are flying the people’s flag.” Flag. “
And the lesson was to get the city council involved early on, especially if the end result is something more than real change or a fun art project.
The current official flag for the city of Cleveland was approved by the City Council in 1895, approved by Mayor Robert McKison in 1896, and designed by 18-year-old art school graduate Susan Hepburn. He entered a contest sponsored by the Plain Dealer and was quickly organized. Ahead of the city’s 100th anniversary, it was praised by the selection committee, which praised its “strength and simplicity.”
Intended to express emotional civic pride as the big day arrives, the design includes a symbolic homage to Cleveland’s status as a shipping port and industrial center. It was. The colors red, white, and blue were used to reflect the colors of the American flag and allay concerns that the city flag would elevate the national flag. (The motto “Progress and Prosperity” was not included in the original design and was only added in the 1960s.)
More than a century later, the flag is still being carried, but not without complaints.
Now we have a chance to replace it with something more civically appropriate for today’s Cleveland. The submission form includes survey responses collected by the group and notes about what some residents have expressed they would like to see in terms of colors and symbols, but these are just suggestions and not restrictive guidelines. .
The next Susan Hepburn is out there somewhere. A search to find them will begin on Monday.
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