Creative Pinellas expanding Artist Grant program for 2025

More grants helping artists in Pinellas County

FOX 13 photojournalist Barry Wong shows us how the expansion of the Creative Pinellas Artist Grant program will have a positive impact on the arts in the Bay Area.

LARGO, Fla. - Luci Westphal used her 2024 Creative Pinellas Emerging Artist Grant to create and showcase a thought-provoking piece.

"It alluded to a person taking shelter, and I invited people to leave their mark on the inside," she said.

Westphal created an interactive installation called "Public Walls and In-Between Spaces". It was built out of privacy fence and featured 20 years of Westphal’s photography on the outside.

Plants lined the bottom. It was on display at Creative Pinellas over the summer.

"The work was an invitation to the audience to contemplate ideas of beauty and need in the urban environment," she said.

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Creative Pinellas is expanding the Artist Grant program for 2025, with the goal of broadening who can apply. The grants are now broken up into four different sections: Arts Impact Fund, Arts Ignite Fund, Florida RAMA Fund and Sixstar Performance Art Fund.

"Instead of asking artists to identify as either a professional artist or an emerging artist, we're opening up our granting process so that artists of all stripes and all genres can really take advantage of this funding opportunity," Creative Pinellas CEO Margaret Murray said.

Murray says 70% of previous applicants were focused on visual arts, so they are hoping to attract artists in other areas like film, writing, music and performance. Creative Pinellas still plans to have an Emerging Artist Exhibition, so artists like Westphal can showcase their work.

"I don't have a doubt that the arts and artists are central to the health of our society, both locally and globally, and therefore, I believe that art grants are also essential for the health of our society," Westphal said.

For more information on Creative Pinellas' grant program, click here.

For more information on Luci Westphal, click here.

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