St. Petersburg Launches a Comprehensive Arts Strategy

The St. Petersburg Arts Alliance, Downtown Partnership, and City of St. Petersburg released the Comprehensive Arts Strategy (CAS) on Wednesday, July 28 at the Museum of Fine Arts.  Developed over several months with thousands of community voices, the Strategy proposes strategic recommendations to grow St. Petersburg’s arts sector and improve overall community prosperity. At the launch event, organizers announced that $100,000 in initial seed funding from public and private sources has already been pledged to help launch the Strategy.  

The CAS recommends a path for increased collaboration, new marketing opportunities, and identifies immediate and long terms priorities. The strategy incorporates best practices from other communities and includes perspectives from leaders in business, politics, philanthropic nonprofit sectors as well as artists, arts organizations, and art patrons. It also identifies existing and new audiences as well as provides a rationale for public and private sector leaders to champion art. Additionally, it details a five-year road map for future development and aims to make St. Petersburg the preeminent City of Arts in the Southeastern United States. The Comprehensive Arts Strategy research was facilitated by Karen Eber Davis Consulting.

“There is no better time than now to move this strategy forward,” said Terry Marks, CEO of the St. Petersburg Arts Alliance (See right). “We are a city of world class museums, outstanding performing artists and performing art venues, galleries, districts, visual artists, art related organizations and art related educational opportunities. We are a city that is rich in its diversity, with raised consciousness about equity, inclusion and simply caring for one another. Art draws us together, allows us to communicate what we know to be the truth. The Comprehensive Arts Strategy is meant to grow with us, respond to our needs as an arts and culture community. This is a city of art that is evolving; it requires us to be a city of one collective, unified voice.”

“St Petersburg already benefits from a robust arts community that creates a distinct sense of place and contributes to larger community economic success,” said Jason Mathis, CEO of the St. Petersburg Downtown Partnership. “As new art installations and cultural assets open and artists and art organizations navigate the impact of COVID, the Arts Alliance, Downtown Partnership, and City recognized that this is a pivotal moment to develop a shared vision as a City of Art.”    

The Comprehensive Arts Strategy is available on our Resources page.

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