This weekend, check out the Lit Cleveland mixer at Platform Beer Company, shop early at The Flea’s Holiday Kick-Off Market, get some food for thought at Creative Mornings and attend 78th St. Studio’s Third Fridays.

MOCA, Cleveland's Museum of Contemporary Art, continually stretches art far beyond the canvas, but the internationally revered icon started out as a tiny bastion of counterculture during the tumultuous 60s.

Justin Glanville is a freelance writer and urban planner. He loves exploring cities in general and Cleveland in particular, telling the stories of people in their places. He lives in industrial-natural borderland between Tremont and Ohio City with his dog Vinny. He likes friends. You can find him on his website. 

The expansion of early education in greater Cleveland received a $10 million boost last week when Cuyahoga County Council and executive Armond Budish reached a biennial budget agreement for 2016 and 2017.
 
The two-year investment creates the Cuyahoga Early Childhood Trust, a public-private partnership meant to attract private funds to continue the push for universal, high-quality pre-kindergarten education to children across the county.

I... Read more >

Vita Urbana, a multi-service convenience store, is scheduled to open in mid-January in the Shoreway Building, 1260 West 76th St., overlooking Edgewater Park.

Designed with a sense of community, the compact, 4,000 square-foot space will pack a host of services for residents of the Shoreway Building and the entire Battery Park neighborhood.
 
“Vita Urbana will combine the convenience of a coffee shop, an artisanal grocery store, and a full service ba... Read more >

Kaylyn Hlavaty is a freelance journalist based in Cleveland, Ohio. Prior to relocating back to the states, Kaylyn reported about humanitarian, social, cultural, and refugee-related issues in the Middle East. Her work has appeared in The Washington Times, The Plain Dealer, Cleveland Magazine, Al Monitor, BELT Magazine, U.S. News & World Report, MIT Tech Review, among others.

Mary Manno Sweeney is a writer, music enthusiast and social media strategist. Her work has appeared in Cleveland Scene, cleveland.com,Cleveland Magazine, The Journal of Communication and in her restaurant/food culture blog, Amalgamato. She is a graduate of Cleveland State University, where she studied mass communication. In addition to writing, Mary‘s professional experience includes media planning (KCH Design, Limited), television market r... Read more >

Kim Palmer is a freelance journalist living in Cleveland’s Detroit-Shoreway neighborhood. For four years she has covered breaking national interest news in Ohio for Reuters’ America’s Wire. You can follow Kim on Twitter at @kimfouroffive.

The finished lakefront trail project will help spur investment and development along the lakeshore portion of the city, supporters say   

Mark Oprea is a regular contributor to FreshWater Cleveland. He’s written for the Pacific Standard, OZY, and Cleveland Magazine, and was a correspondent in Mexico in 2018. He lives in Ohio City. More of his work can be found on his personal website.

The concept of saving compostable food from landfills, and instead putting it to good use, is a notion that is starting to catch on in Northeast Ohio.

As a biomedical engineering graduate student at CWRU, Punkaj Ahuja was working in 2010 on applications for a core sensor his team was developing.

Then the idea for a rapid blood test using the same technology came to him. By October 2014, he had formed Apollo Medical Devices – a company that is developing a low-cost, accurate and rapid blood analysis system.The company has offices at BioEnterprise.
 
“Our device uses rapid bloo... Read more >

In 2009, Cleveland City Council updated its non-discrimination law to include transgender people. Then council added an amendment.

 But there was a problem with the wording, activists in the transgender community say. Council added an amendment to the law stating that employers and places of public accommodations could tell a transgender individual which restroom – men’s or women’s -- they could or could not use,  instead of leaving that decisi... Read more >

The aromas of fresh baked bread and pastries will soon waft through the streets of Cleveland when Bloom Artisan Bakery and Café opens two locations next year. In a social enterprise venture, Towards Employment, a non-profit organization dedicated to helping low income and disadvantaged adults achieve self-sufficiency through employment, announced last week that it will open bakeries in both Public Square and on the Cleveland State campus.

“The Towards Employm... Read more >