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Today, our Ingenuity Family is announcing that Executive Artistic Director Emily Appelbaum will be stepping down at the end of 2025 after ten years of visionary leadership. Working with the Ingenuity Board of Directors, Staff and other stakeholders, she will continue to serve as a consultant to ensure a seamless transition and ongoing momentum for the organization’s programs, funders, and community partners.
Under Appelbaum’s direction, Ingenuity Cleveland evolved from a once-a-year arts, music, and technology festival into a year-round creative force at the heart of Cleveland’s innovation and maker community. During her tenure, she founded IngenuityLabs, a permanent home for creators, entrepreneurs, and technologists; co-founded the Hamilton Collaborative, a hub for local innovation; and positioned Ingenuity as a leading voice in creative placemaking and cultural development throughout the region.
She also oversaw the growth of Ingenuity's year-round programming, including establishing the IngenuityLabs Incubator and The Ingeneers, a volunteer-driven creative collective comprising 300 members who meet weekly to vision, imagine and build a better Cleveland.
Appelbaum departs the organization on strong footing, having built a robust donor network, deep community partnerships, and a legacy of community outreach evident across Cleveland, including in Ingenuity's home neighborhood of St. Clair-Superior. In the 2025 Season, Ingenuity's works ranged from annual partnerships with Brite Winter and Cleveland's Juneteenth Freedom Fest, to the delivery of a prestigious City of Cleveland Transformative Arts Fund project, Impart 216, in partnership with Sankofa Fine Arts director Robin Robinson, to ongoing neighborhood interventions from murals and pop-up events to a pocket park playground. This year’s IngenuityFest 2025: Forging the Future, welcomed nearly 20,000 attendees and received broad acclaim for its interactive exhibits, performances, and spectrum of entertainment.
Reflecting on her tenure, Appelbaum shares:
"It has been my great honor to serve in this role, building — together with our incredible staff, board, volunteers, partners and an amazing range of dreamers & doers — a space where creativity can thrive. We’ve transformed Ingenuity from a festival into a year-round petri dish of innovation — an enduring symbol of what can happen when art, technology, and community intersect. We've set ourselves up for tremendous success, and I am confident that the organization’s next chapter will be its most inspiring yet.”
In the coming year, Ingenuity Cleveland expects to continue developing a 100,000 square foot expansion of IngenuityLabs, including by adding new spaces for artisans, IngenuityLabs Incubator members, educational programs, and the Ingenuity STEAMshop — a large-scale, flexible, blackbox performance and technology space.
“Emily’s leadership has been nothing short of transformational,” adds Kristen Hoover Boutton, Chair of the Ingenuity Cleveland Board. “She took Ingenuity from a beloved annual event and turned it into a thriving, year-round ecosystem for creativity, collaboration, and innovation. Her impact on Cleveland’s arts and innovation landscape will be felt for years to come.”
The Ingenuity Board of Directors has shaped a comprehensive transition plan, the details of which will be announced after the 2025-2026 Holiday Season. Future leadership and work is intended to to build on Appelbaum’s legacy —expanding the organization’s reach, deepening community impact, and supporting artists and creators throughout the region. During the transition, Appelbaum will assist with strategic handoffs and capital planning initiatives as Ingenuity prepares to launch its next three-year strategic plan in 2026.
We hope you will join us in celebrating an incredible year, and chapter, of Ingenuity's success, and invite you to join us with FLANNEL & FINERY, a special evening of celebration, Saturday December 6th, 2025.
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