Creative Pinellas Announces Return Of Professional Artist Grant

Creative Pinellas announces the return of their Professional Artist Grant, designed to support and sustain Pinellas County's creative community and to enhance the County as an arts and culture brand. The program provides an unrestricted, non-matching financial award to Pinellas County artists of outstanding talent and ability who, with a history of increasingly successful work on the local, national, or international stage, bring recognition, awareness and interest to our community, inspire other artists and art lovers, and help make Pinellas County a vibrant arts and cultural community.

The online application period opens on Wednesday, October 25, 2017 and closes on December 5, 2017 at 5:00 p.M. Grants will be given for original work in choreography, literature, media arts, music composition, theatre/musical theatre, visual arts and interdisciplinary arts. Program guidelines, a sample application, grant FAQs, and the online application will be available at creativepinellas.org when the grant period opens.

"The Professional Artist Grant program reflects Creative Pinellas' desire to support our professional artists, and to provide them with the resources they need to continue living, working and contributing here in Pinellas County," said Christopher Hubbard, programs manager for Creative Pinellas. "The Professional Artist Grant aligns with our ongoing mission to provide high quality, transformative programs that add value for the people and communities they serve, from artists and arts organizations, to the residents and visitors of Pinellas County."

Funds for the grant program will be available in early 2018, and can be used to support artists' efforts to advance their careers in their chosen disciplines in the widest sense. Over the course of the funding period, which ends in September, 2018 recipients will participate in community activities to acquaint residents and visitors with their work and with the opportunities to engage with the arts in Pinellas County. They will also provide insights into their creative processes through blogs posted at impactreturns.org.

Past awardees have written about current projects, critiques on work in progress, reflections on life as an artist, and more. "We are very excited about entering our third year offering grants to professional artists," said Barbara St. Clair executive director of Creative Pinellas. "It's great to be able to come to this program today with a track record, and to be able to understand and share how the program has progressed and how much it has delivered to the community. Artists who received grants from us in the first year are now mentors for our emerging artists. They are also guest editors for our journal and guests on our podcasts, which are attracting listeners from around the world. We are able to watch this program in real time and see how it functions as a mechanism to support artists in their professional career and as a means to build and sustain our community."

For more information about all of Creative Pinellas' Impact Returns Grant Programs and to apply, please visit creativepinellas.org/grants.

About Creative Pinellas

At Creative Pinellas our mission is to facilitate a vibrant, integrated, collaborative andsustainable Pinellas County Arts Community and cultural destination. We strive to be the premier Local Arts Agency, recognized locally and globally for our contribution to arts and culture. We are focused on creating vibrant communities; supporting artists, arts organizations and the creative community; supporting economic development; showcasing Pinellas County as a cultural destination; and making arts and creative expression and experience available to all. As the County's Local Arts Agency, Creative Pinellas and the programs we deliver are funded by the Pinellas County Board of County Commissioners, Visit St Petersburg / Clearwater, the State of Florida, Department of State, Division of Cultural Affairs and by sales of the State of the Arts specialty license plate in Pinellas County.

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