Catalyze 2025: Margaret Murray (Creative Pinellas)

We’re asking thought leaders, business people and creatives to talk about the upcoming year and give us catalyzing ideas for making Pinellas County 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.

With all that’s happened in 2024, Creative Pinellas transformed its once-a-year Arts Annual bash into a Hurricane Relief Fundraiser.

Essentially a cocktails ‘n’ hors d’oeuvres affair with new work by more than 120 local artists, live music (from Soul Mafia) and other unique elements, plus mixing, plus mingling, the event was held Dec. 8.

“It’s a big party every year, but this year we decided that whatever money we raised, we needed to be able to give back to the community,” said CEO and executive director Margaret Murray.

And the place was packed. Creative Pinellas raised $20,000, most of which it’s granting right back to artists and arts organizations impacted by the ’24 triple-whammy: The Florida governor’s veto of any and all arts funding in June, followed in the fall by two devastating hurricanes.

The big crowd, Murray said, “showed me that there’s such a strong sense of community here. It was a $100 ticket, which is steep for us, and steep for a lot of people at this moment in time, but people came through and supported the artists in this area. And I’m really heartened by that.”

Creative Pinellas is the county’s umbrella arts support organization. And in a year when artists lost funding, and some lost their homes, their studios and their livelihoods, support – financial and otherwise – is needed more than ever.

The Creative Pinellas Gallery, on Walsingham Road in Largo, got three inches of water during Hurricane Helene.

“It’s just been once punch in the stomach after another for the arts community in 2024,” Murray said. “Arts organizations, not only were they temporarily closed, they lost volunteers, they lost donors, they lost staff members – and on top of that they have to look to repairing their facilities.

“I will say that the county is working to secure some federal funding to help cultural organizations with some additional funds to repair their facilities – and to safeguard them in the future. So that’s something I’m really excited about seeing come to fruition. And we’re working with the county on that.”

As for the unprecedented one hundred percent veto, well, Murray said she’s hearing, through the proverbial grapevine, that more bad news is likely coming. “At this point, there’s no funding for the arts in the budget for the next fiscal year,” she said.

Take heart, however.

“We did a great job here in Pinellas County. We met with statewide elected officials. There’s a lobbying day in March that a lot of arts leaders are going to attend. Statewide elected officials are aware of the importance of the arts, so there is a possibility that it could be put back into the budget.”

All of these factors and facts rolled together give Murray a mix of resolve and optimism for 2025.

“I can’t even remember the last time I spoke to someone who didn’t have an understanding of how important the arts are here,” she said. “There is such a willingness and such an awareness about the importance of how it builds cities, how it enhances civic pride, the economic impact.

“So I think one of the things I’m looking forward to is finding out how we can develop other sources of revenue for artists and arts communities. And what that looks like.”