St. Pete Emeritus: John Collins says goodbye

According to the Miriam-Webster dictionary, the title Emeritus is bestowed upon “a person retired from professional life but permitted to retain as an honorary title the rank of the last office held.” St. Pete Emeritus is a recurring series shining a light on citizens who have given much to our city, and are now transitioning to a well-deserved retirement.

After 23 years in St. Petersburg, where he shaped and re-shaped the way the arts, the City and the citizenry interact, John Collins is leaving his adopted city. This week, Collins – the longtime executive director of the St. Petersburg Arts Alliance – and his wife Mary Ellen are moving to Annapolis, Maryland.

They’re not leaving St. Pete, per se, Collins explains. They’re just getting the heck out of Florida.

“We are leaving because of heat, humidity, hurricanes and DeSantis. In this state, where Canada has to put out an advisory for Black people and gays who want to travel here. We cannot abide that. I am a child of the ‘60s and a person of my own convictions. My wife, even more so about politics.

“I’m a Boston Democrat, and I cannot understand what’s happening to this state, much less the country. So we were looking for a place where we could live with like-minded liberal people.”

St. John’s Liberal Arts College, Collins explains, was Annapolis’ biggest draw for him. “I wanted to be near a college, I wanted to be near water and I wanted to be warm. Well, the warmth I’m kind of giving up a little bit on.”

Collins, 73, announced his retirement from the Arts Alliance on his 70^th birthday. Although he’s remained active in arts advocacy and fundraising, he and Mary Ellen are “ready for the next great adventure,” he says, adding a laugh: “Which sounds kind of dumb.”

The truth is, they’re ready to enjoy life. And Florida’s current political climate is making that difficult.

“Here we are in a state that’s banned books, and we are within walking distance of St. John’s College, which is the ‘Great Books’ college.

“Here we are having all these issues with trans people, and they’re trying up in Maryland to become a state safe house for trans people.”

“Their governor is a Democratic, Black, smart person who in his first year has already passed legislation that brings Dems and Republicans together. It’s a place where people are civilized.

“And they have a tremendous arts scene.”

It was during his nine-year tenure as Vice President of Advancement at Boston’s Berklee College of Music, in the 1990s, that Collins first ran into a phrase that would become his mantra: “If you don’t take care of business, you’ll be saying ‘Do you want fries with that?’ at McDonald’s.”

In other words, art and business need not be, and should not be, mutually exclusive. The St. Petersburg Arts Alliance pioneered classes for artists, musicians and other creatives so that they could learn how to market themselves, attract and keep an audience, and – ideally – make a living doing the things they loved.

Collins began his career on the other side of the desk, as an actor and director in community and church theaters in Boston and Cambridge, Massachusetts.

He was also a professional mime, and taught the performance art in the Boston area.

“I ran the Boston Mime Theatre for two years,” he says. “We learned how to make it a nonprofit, and I kept four or five people making money for a couple years. What I learned was, you could open a show and have 20 or 200 people in the audience. We made more money selling cookies during intermission than we did on admissions. It’s simple business.”

He learned how to write grants. “As everybody says, 60 percent of your money comes from tickets, and the rest from grants.”

It was around this time that Collins decided an actor’s life was NOT for him (and miming wasn’t exactly a lucrative career choice). He preferred the administrative side of things. For five years, he managed Tufts University’s Arena Theatre, before returning to his alma mater, Emerson College, for a Masters in Theatre Management. He ran Emerson’s Alumni Relationships office and produced cabarets all over the country. His great desire, he recalls, was to oversee the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.

Next came Berklee; Collins traveled the world raising money for what would soon become the largest college of music in the world.

It was during his four-year tenure at Arizona State University West, running the development office, that Collins was approached by Bill Heller, president of the University of South Florida St. Petersburg. He flew to St. Petersburg – a city he’d barely heard of – to interview as the college’s head of campus development.

“I came here on my 50^th birthday, and Mary Ellen and I stayed at the Vinoy,” Collins remembers. “I sat there on the deck they have out front and read my birthday cards. We looked around at what was going on there – and said ‘we could live here.’”

It was, he says, a “walking city” like his beloved Boston. “As you walked down Central, you could discover things. The idea of discovering something new was very important to us, to keep us alive and fresh. Same with theater, right? It’s all about discovery.”

He also saw potential in the community back-and-forth. “The mayor met with citizens every Friday at Atlanta Bread Company. It was a place you could raise your hand and get involved.”

Once moved in and employed by USF, Collins joined the city’s arts advisory committee, learning how city government worked, and its relationship to the arts. “You could see how the arts was going to change the city,” he says.

“So I got to know a lot of the arts folks, and we got a lot of the grants out, and so on. We helped make it better, I think, while I was at City Hall.”

He set up his own firm, and was hired to do fundraising for numerous clients, including the Florida Holocaust Museum and Shorecrest Preparatory School. “I have raised millions of dollars in this town, that people don’t know about,” he says.

Within a few years, however, another Florida city’s government made him an offer he couldn’t refuse. But after 18 months directing Boca Raton’s Mizner Park Amphitheatre, producing concerts and festivals (and helping the administration eliminate its massive debt) he decided he and Mary Ellen weren’t “East Coast Boca people.”

So it was back to St. Pete, and the city’s arts advisory committee (Collins would soon become its Chair) and the soon-to-be dissolved Pinellas Cultural Council (this would later rise again, as Creative Pinellas).

Bill Foster was mayor when the St. Petersburg Arts Alliance was created in 2012. The nonprofit organization’s published mandate was “driving arts-related economic development and funding, advocating for art and artists, and educating at all levels.” The Chamber of Commerce gave them office space.

Fundraising, of course, was a big part of the job from the start, along with managing grant moneys, donations and sponsorships. Along with making members of the city’s arts communities feel valued, and supported both financially and in a marketing, cheerleading sense.

Under Collins’ watch, the Arts Alliance established the ACE arts in the schools program, the fundraising MUSE Awards, the SHINE Mural Festival and more. A weekly newsletter – bringing everyone closer together – was also launched.

In 2015, the Arts Alliance established an arts endowment fund at the Community Foundation Tampa Bay.

As the city’s growing pains got more acute, so did the needs of the Arts Alliance. Collins found himself, time and again, frustrated that city and state funding never seemed to be enough for what he felt was necessary for the arts.

As for the city’s allocations to the arts: “This year, they’re going to give $500,000 out, and last year it was $400,000. That pie is growing, but so are the people that are applying for it. The slices are still getting narrower and narrower, and this decreasing spiral of funding from the city is the absolute antithesis of what they should be doing.

“If you want to do a South by Southwest Festival, don’t just say ‘the Arts Alliance should do it.’ Put $6 million behind it, because that’s what Austin pays their people to get it going. If you want to do a Spoleto Festival, put $6 million behind it for two or three years. You want to do an Art Basel? Step up and commit to a multi-year funding plan.”

He’s three years retired, but he still cares passionately about what he sees as the arts getting the short stick.

“I got sick and tired of hearing ‘Here comes John, watch your wallet,’” Collins says. “I didn’t really need to do that any more. The arts are the only ones that are scratching, scratching, scratching. Baseball doesn’t have to scratch. God forbid.

“What if American Stage said ‘We got a better offer and we’re moving to Orlando.’ Would anybody struggle to keep them here, after they’ve been here 43 years? The arts have not been good about selling themselves as valuable to the community. Like baseball has, for example.”

He officially retired March 31, 2021. Terry Marks has been in the CEO’s office since that time.

Once they made the decision to uproot for Annapolis, John and Mary Ellen sold their Old Northeast home and bought a condo in their new city’s downtown district.

“We love St. Pete,” Collins wants everyone to know. “We absolutely adore our community.” But it’s simply time to move on.

Not all ties have been severed: As Collins was transitioning out of the Arts Alliance, Palladium Theater executive director Paul Wilborn asked him to come on board as a consultant on the Palladium’s ongoing  capital campaign.

Immediately, Collins began writing grants, talking and schmoozing on behalf of the theater. He says he’ll continue to work with Wilborn and his team, and expects to be back in St. Pete a time or two when necessities dictate. “It’s really a short flight,” he says.

His interests are, and have always been, photography, sailing … and blues guitar. “My goal in life, it used to be when I was 60, now it’ll have to be 80, is to be able to play the blues on my 1969 Gibson 355,” he explains. “I’ve had it for years. I really want to spend two three hours a day learning music.

“I’ve been taking classes at the School of Rock, on Central Avenue. I’ll go in on Saturday mornings and there’s a whole bunch of 10- and 12-year-olds, and me.”