By J.A. Jones | Contributor
Creative Pinellas Call to Action
“The devastating impact of youth mental health concerns is increasingly evident on a global scale. This crisis calls for innovative solutions that are sufficiently accessible, scalable, and cost-effective to support diverse communities around the world. One such solution involves engagement in the arts: incorporating and building upon existing local resources and cultural practices to bolster youth mental health.” National Library of Medicine, https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10763059/
Art engagements offer beauty, joy, and creativity. But they have always also offered much more – bringing together communities, youth, and families for experiences that build, connect…and offer opportunities to relax, play, and decompress. Art events, for families, become health and wellness events.
During times of difficult and major transition such as the kind our nation, states, and cities are experiencing, we should be supporting the organizations offering these engagements, not canceling them.
Recently, the Pinellas County Commissioners have floated cutting the County’s arts agency, Creative Pinellas, from the budget. While budget tightening is unavoidable, we should all be paying attention to what is removed from the budget and how.
Cutting the county’s only arts agency will decimate the Arts Summer Camp scholarship program Creative Pinellas has run annually for several years. While every community should have access to the educational and emotional wellness and uplift of free art, some youth, parents, and families only get access to these experiences through offerings like Creative Pinellas’ summer camp scholarship program.
Cutting an organization that spends its dollars providing free arts experiences for youth through its summer camp program, along with a variety of other family-friendly engagements, is short-sighted.
Creative Pinellas has responded by offering an outline of its sound fiscal stewardship of county funds, highlighting its impact on cultural tourism. Indeed, the county’s position seems only to focus on Creative Pinellas’ impact on the county’s tourism dollars – which may be the most fiscal-minded municipal position to take.
But recent Americans for the Arts surveys revealed Pinellas County’s $294.7 million in economic activity during 2022, even as Creative Pinellas worked to establish a county cultural plan. County Commissioners might want to take seriously how they can benefit from the work of a designated arts agency that has been impacting the county while creating a healthier one.
Creative Pinellas also funded SPACEcraft, a mobile arts project conceived to bring creative play and exploration throughout Pinellas, conceived by artists working with NOMADstudio. NOMAD’s executive director, Carrie Boucher works with a team to operate the NOMAD Art Bus, and serve children and families through free pop-up art experiences for families in parks throughout Pinellas.
“Community engagement through the arts supports public health. SPACEcraft was a project that wouldn’t have been possible without Creative Pinellas. The work the NOMADstudio team and collaborators accomplished through that project wasn’t just about providing art experiences. It was about supporting public health through strengthening social cohesion here in Pinellas County,” Boucher shared.
She pointed to the University of Florida Center for Arts in Medicine’s evidence-informed framework mapping the relationship between place-based arts, cultural strategies, social cohesion, and increased equitable community well-being.
“We see firsthand that if you create open-ended opportunities for residents to engage in creative experiences with their neighbors and you make that accessible by designing and marketing it with children in mind (but not for children exclusively), families will come to engage too,” she added.
Boucher noted that arts engagements like these reach the larger community by offering not just kids, but families and opportunity to “do art” and bond in healthy ways.
“Grandmas, aunts, parents, cousins, care providers. If your goal is to provide children with enrichment, that’s great itself, but if you look at the bigger picture, you see deeper impact in that it directly supports public health, which is something everyone should care about.”
Community members who want to learn more about this threat to supporting health and wellness can learn more about the issue here and here.
For more immediate impact, share your support for Creative Pinellas by reaching the County Commissioners by email or phone:
Chris Scherer (District 1) cscherer@pinellas.gov | (727) 464-3365
Brian Scott (Chair, District 2) brscott@pinellas.gov | (727) 464-3360
Vince Nowicki (District 3) vnowicki@pinellas.gov | (727) 464-3363
Dave Eggers (Vice Chair, District 4) deggers@pinellas.gov | (727) 464-3276
Chris Latvala (District 5) clatvala@pinellas.gov | (727) 464-3278
Kathleen Peters (District 6) kpeters@pinellas.gov | (727) 464-3568
René Flowers (District 7) rflowers@pinellas.gov | (727) 464-3614
Attend the Pinellas County Commission Budget Meeting on Thursday, September 4, 2025, at 6:00 p.m.
Pinellas County Communications, 333 Chestnut St, Clearwater, Florida 33756.
