Seven months ago, Pinellas County began an experiment in nurturing the arts. Following the dissolution of its traditional grant-making arts council, Pinellas County Cultural Affairs, due to budget cuts in late 2010, the county made plans for a successor agency intended primarily to generate attention for Pinellas artists and arts organizations rather than funding them. With $300,000 in seed money and the hiring of director T. Hampton Dohrman in December, Creative Pinellas was born.
Last week, a major manifestation of the new organization’s mission— the promotional website and blogging initiative called Articulate— went live online. Designed to harness the power of informal journalism for arts marketing, the site publishes regular contributions by a dozen community bloggers who include current and former arts journalists, artists of various disciplines and other arts lovers. Along with events listings, photos and videos, Articulate offers up their opinionated ruminations on the state of the arts in specific genres (e.g., Pinellas’s literary scene), artist profiles and stories about exhibits and concerts.
"It serves the purpose of promoting and marketing artists in Pinellas County because you've got it straight from the source of a person who’s embedded with it,” says Mitzi Gordon, Creative Pinellas media manager.
This article appears in Jul 19-25, 2012.