Funding for the Creative Pinellas arts support organization, withdrawn by Pinellas County Commissioners, is being re-routed.<\/p>\n
In September, commissioners decided the 10-year-old Creative Pinellas wasn\u2019t doing enough to support tourism in the region, and re-assigned the organization\u2019s yearly stipend of $1 million to Visit St. Pete-Clearwater, the county\u2019s tourism marketing agency.<\/p>\n
Speaking to the County\u2019s Tourist Development Council Wednesday, VSPC CEO Brian Lowack laid out the tentative plan for a \u201cMonth of the Arts,\u201d once per year, with contributions from Creative Pinellas, the St. Petersburg Arts Alliance and the Clearwater Arts Alliance.<\/p>\n
Working with Margaret Murray, the CEO of Creative Pinellas, along with Arts Alliance directors Helen French (St. Petersburg) and Beth Daniels (Clearwater), Lowack said, the question in the air was \u201cHow can we come up with a program that really highlights our creative community, while bringing awareness to the destination?\u201d<\/p>\n
Since early October, Lowack told the TDC, \u201cWe\u2019ve had a number of meetings where we have come up with how we can combine our resources, as well as our expertise, to really put together a great work product \u2026 as a group over the last month, we\u2019ve worked together to come up with this.\u201d<\/p>\n
With a budget of $500,000, the unnamed, monthlong celebration (starting, most likely, in November 2026) will be essentially overseen by Creative Pinellas, with managerial contributions from the city arts support groups.<\/p>\n
Cost for awards and event production ($400,000) will break down as up to $25,000 for larger experiences, and up to $10,000 for smaller experiences. Those terms were not defined.<\/p>\n
Although many other details have yet to be worked out, participating artists (both visual and performing) will be chosen by a seven-member selection committee comprised of representatives from VSPC and the arts groups.<\/p>\n
Program administration costs will be $75,000 for Creative Pinellas, $15,000 for the St. Petersburg Arts Alliance and $10,000 for Clearwater Arts Alliance.<\/p>\n
The yet-unnamed Month of the Arts, Lowack said, will be aggressively marketed to potential visitors.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe hope that the effect is other arts institutions, museums, the creative community can get behind this and plug into this Month of the Arts,\u201d said Lowack. \u201cIt\u2019s something that we can celebrate, and something we can really brand and push out to the world.\u201d<\/p>\n
Daniels, of the Clearwater Arts Alliance, suggested at Wednesday\u2019s meeting that the \u201cMonth of the Arts\u201d idea be modified to include previously-existing events that are proven crowd favorites.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou ought to be Oct. 15 to Nov. 20 or something \u2013 and it\u2019s a month of music and art,\u201d she said. \u201cThat way, you\u2019re not tying yourself only to November, you\u2019re playing off of some of the things you already have that are highly successful.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd then you\u2019re asking creative people to find ways to get our own citizens and our visitors connected.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Funding for the Creative Pinellas arts support organization, withdrawn by Pinellas County Commissioners, is being re-routed. In September,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":53447,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[202,204,203,199,201,200],"class_list":["post-53446","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53446","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53446"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53446\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53447"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53446"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53446"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53446"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}