The Alexander
Westdale Forum
Atelier of Jason Toth
CLEVELAND’S CREATIVE CONVERSATION SERIES BEGINS | AUGUST 27TH, 2025
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Forgotten, But Not Lost
Cleveland’s Boldest Idea Rediscovered & Reimagined, with Greg Deegan and John Perse of Teaching Cleveland
Series I - Three part conversation
Cleveland’s pride isn’t a random phenomenon… it was planned over a century ago.
This is not another history talk, but we will be talking about history. Rather, it’s a thoughtful conversation inside an art gallery and creative studio where past and future collide. Cleveland’s architectural marvels and cultural landmarks become lenses for something bigger: what we value, what we’ve lost, and what we’re willing to create.
In 1903 Cleveland embraced the City Beautiful Movement, a sweeping plan that imagined civic beauty as a policy foundational to identity and ambition. It gave rise to a vision of grandeur, bold architecture, shared spaces, and a sense of permanence that still defines much of our pride today. But what happens when that vision is blurred or even forgotten?
Guided by Greg Deegan and John Perse of Teaching Cleveland, each talk blends historical insight with artwork that reimagines the familiar in vivid surreal color and composition, provoking questions, inspiring dialogue, and challenging us to think differently about our city and ourselves.
The visionaries behind Cleveland’s golden era were flawed, ambitious, and often ruthless, yet they left behind beauty and complexity that shaped generations. Together we will explore how those choices echo in our present and what it might mean to reclaim boldness without repeating their mistakes.
This is the start of an engaging conversation about creative thinking, civic imagination, and the role each of us plays in shaping what comes tomorrow.
The conversation begins here. Where it goes next is up to you.
About Teaching Cleveland
Teaching Cleveland is an educational nonprofit dedicated to connecting people with Cleveland’s history through storytelling, civic dialogue, and historical context. They help people understand where we have been so we can think more critically about where we are going.
Greg Deegan, Executive Director of Teaching Cleveland
John Perse, Research and Publishing AssociateConversation One: When Beauty Was Policy
August 27th, 2025 | 5:30pm-7:30pm
The Bold Plan Built our Pride Today, Do Our Values Still Allow It?
At the dawn of the 20th century, Cleveland embraced a radical idea: that beauty was not just an ornament, but a civic necessity. The Group Plan of 1903, rooted in the City Beautiful Movement, reimagined Cleveland as a city of grandeur—monumental architecture, expansive public spaces, and a design philosophy that believed the environment could shape character, pride, and progress.
More than 120 years later, those ideas feel surprisingly radical and revolutionary. In a time when functionality often eclipses beauty, what can we learn from a moment when our leaders believed aesthetics and ambition belonged at the heart of city life and at the core of its identity?
This conversation explores what the Group Plan achieved, where its promises fell short, and what traces remain in the Cleveland we know today. Through the lens of history, and the surreal, reimagined cityscapes of artist Jason Toth, we’ll consider what it would take to reclaim that boldness without repeating the mistakes of the past (and being mindful of the mistakes we’re certainly already making).
Join the conversation. Buy tickets for the August 27th talk on our Eventbrite page.
The Alexander Westdale Forum
I’ve always believed the best conversations aren’t the ones you expect, they’re the ones that challenge you, shift your perspective, and stay with you long after they end. That’s why I created The Alexander Westdale Forum.
Inspired by the salons of the past, this is a space for creative dialogue in my atelier at 78th Street Studios. It’s not a lecture. It’s not a panel. It’s an experience where history, art, philosophy and curiosity collide.
I wanted a space where people who enjoy meaningful conversation in pursuit of what is true about our shared experience, not what we think is right, can come together. Isn’t it about time?
— Jason Toth
Future Conversations
Forgotten, Not Lost. Part II
TBA
Forgotten, Not Lost. Part III
TBA
Contact Jason Toth about The Alexander Westdale Forum.
If you have questions about the event, ideas for future series and interest in getting involved, or supporting the forum and its mission through contributions and/or grants. Fill out the form and we’ll be in contact with you shortly. Thank you!