Catalyze 2025: Celeste Davis (Arts, Culture Director)

We’re asking thought leaders, business people and creatives to talk about the upcoming new year and give us catalyzing ideas for making St. Pete a better place to live. What should our city look like? What are their hopes, their plans, their problem-solving ideas? This is Catalyze 2025.

In its fiscal budget for the year 2025, the City of St. Petersburg allotted $550,000 in grant money for artists and art organizations. That’s 50 grand more than 2024, and according to Arts, Culture & Tourism Director Celeste Davis, it’ll come in handy. And then some.

“Our new Level Up arts grant has $50,000 for arts organizations that don’t qualify for the full arts and culture grant, which is the larger grant that we have,” Davis explained.

That grant, $500,000, is divided between arts groups that submit requests for aid; the awarded amounts are decided by the city’s all-volunteer Arts Advisory Committee.

Level Up, Davis said, “is just another opportunity to help smaller organizations in St. Pete.” It will utilize a simpler and easier application process.

“Smaller organizations can use those funds for specific programming, they can use those funds to maybe hire a grant writer,” she said. “And one of the requirements is to take a workshop at the [city-operated business education center] Greenhouse. So as they are developing business plans, or they need help with marketing, we’ve got that great tool right next door to City Hall that can support artists.

“Because artists are businesses. Arts organizations are businesses. And we want to recognize and support that, especially these smaller organizations.”

After Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ June veto of all state arts funding, budget scrambling began in earnest. As an emergency measure, the City Council moved $695,000 from the general fund for artists and organizations in September.

The $550,000 total for FY25 was approved in October.

“I think that in terms of the city we really stepped up,” Davis mused. “Resiliency is a big word – and it’s something that we look to.

“When I think about the level of grants, I think about the city reaching out, listening to smaller organizations and saying ‘We’re here to support you. We want to see you successful.’

“We have the great image of the City of the Arts. And so we’re looking out to figure out how we can grow that, and support organizations as they give us that identity.”

Also coming in 2025 is an expanded online catalog of St. Petersburg’s public art, including murals.

The most visible work of public art in the city is Janet Echelman’s floating net sculpture Bending Arc, part of the St. Pete Pier complex.

The 424-foot suspended piece was damaged during the fall series of hurricanes, but has yet to be removed from its moorings – more than 70 feet above the ground – for repairs. There is, Davis said, a fence around it. “We’re in the process of taking down Bending Arc as we decide what are the best next steps going forward.”

Echelman’s unusual art, which cost $1.5 million in private donations, was controversial when installed in 2020 – and today, it still has its fans, and its detractors.

Bending Arc, Davis believes, “is great placemaking. It’s a great work, where people gather and talk about it. The fact that we have voices that love it – and voices that don’t love it – is a part of the whole art experience.

“You don’t look for public art that is not going to raise some type of emotion. You want people to be engaged with it. People’s like or dislike is part of that whole process of having art that the public can engage with.”