This has been a difficult year for our area. I’m certain everyone has been impacted by our recent storms in some way. For many of our citizens, the recovery will be a long one. These terrible events on top of our already escalating cost of living, unfortunately, makes the warehouse arts districts mission to support our creative community even more challenging.
I’m often asked whether the free market should be the deciding factor in the fate of the arts. I think you probably already know my answer to that, and because you’re here, I believe that at least some part of you feels similarly. I submit to you that while the free market is indisputably beneficial and deeply important in many, many regards, it cannot be the answer to all things. Some things require conscious intervention and forethought to protect them from the whims of a market that can be, at times, rapacious.
Those of us who live here, in this amazing, vibrant community, we must be the protectors and the champions. Our city is growing quickly, but we have an important history of protecting that which outweighs strict monetary accrual. Our cultural capital must be protected just as vigorously as our green spaces, because art is not optional to the human experience – it is vital. It can uplift, it can move, it can even provoke us. It brings us closer to ourselves, it helps us make sense of life, it transcends language and cultural barriers. Whether we’re creating it or experiencing it, art makes us more human. Artists convey that which is difficult to put into words. Our beautiful city has been recognized as an arts destination for over a century, (The Arts Club of St. Petersburg, currently known as the Morean Center of the Arts started in 1917). We need your help to preserve and continue building the rich legacy of the arts here.
Unfortunately, the arts have become needlessly politicized, an easy pawn in a zero-sum game of tit for tat. Cultural funding is in constant peril. Just this year Florida’s Governor vetoed funding for all state arts grants because of two small performing arts festivals that were slated to receive grants that amounted to less than two thousandth of a percent of the total budget. We need our citizens to be better than that. Considering that the arts have been consistently demonstrated to be a solid way to invest in communities with returns that would make even Warren Buffet smile, the logic is not only baffling, it’s completely absent.
Thus, it falls to the privileged class to take up the torch lest our creative community wither on the vine and its contributions be crushed under the boot heel of progress. There is much precedence for the affluent lending both their influence and their monetary support to the arts. Though they certainly weren’t alone, perhaps the most notable example is the Medici family of Florence, who were powerful merchants and bankers. They housed and supported developing artists, sponsored artist apprenticeships and are now remembered, more than 500 years later, as a significant driving force in ushering in the Renaissance. Due to their patronage Florence remains the cultural epicenter of the western world. It bears mentioning that Florence was already a wealthy, thriving, powerful city, but there was an understanding that great art, and great ideas could only make this already triumphant city even better. What do you want to see for our city? What legacy do you want to remain in 10, 50, or 100 years?
Though the creative community has been born of an organic and unique synergy of variables, keeping it intact through the tumultuous whirl of development and commerce must be an intentional and deliberate act. A rising tide should lift all ships, but our rapidly rising property values have been more akin to a storm surge, leaving our creatives battered and struggling. That’s why WADA exists; to navigate the sea of change for the creative community so it’s not lost but sustained by the very forces that threaten it – because those forces recognize its value is undeniable.
We call upon you as leaders of this community to nurture and invest in the future of the arts in our beloved city. •
