A new collaborative funding effort for arts in Florida

For years, the Clearwater Sister Cities nonprofit group wanted to launch a lantern festival to showcase and show respect for the culture of longtime counterpart Nagano, Japan. 

After a few years on the drawing board, the inaugural Clearwater Illuminations: Lantern Festival & International Night Market lifts off December 6th at Coachman Park on the downtown waterfront. The Clearwater lantern festival’s debut is also the finale of Art Everywhere, a new month-long celebration of arts and culture winding through Pinellas County later this year

A new collaboration between Creative Pinellas and Visit St. Pete-Clearwater, Art Everywhere awarded $350,000 in grants to close to 30 artists and arts organizations for events, exhibits, performances, and programming taking place from early November to early December. 

Clearwater Sister Cities Executive Director Stephanie Chill says the grant funding is the reason their long-discussed lantern festival is happening.

“This is an idea that we’ve discussed between the nonprofit partners and the City of Clearwater for a long time,” Chill says. “We’re hoping this will become an annual event. Once we get this kickstarted, I see it becoming a really strong international partnership with our sister city. The goal is to establish an event that Clearwater can hold regularly and, every five years, have an official sister-city delegation. The hope is we can have the festival coincide with their next visit, which will be our 70th anniversary (as sister cities).”  

Pinellas as cultural destination 

In March 2026, the Pinellas County Commission approved a new arts tourism funding program aimed at positioning Pinellas as a cultural destination and boosting tourism numbers. Commissioners established the new program after a majority voted to remove funding for Creative Pinellas before approving this year’s budget and shifted the local arts agency’s share of tourist development tax money to Visit St. Pete-Clearwater. Under the current agreement, Visit St. Pete-Clearwater funds Art Everywhere with tourist development tax revenues, and Creative Pinellas administers the grant program. 

Several late fall festivals received grants,  a mix of well-established events like the Junior League of Clearwater-Dunedin Art Harvest, Thanksgiving weekend’s massive Shopapalooza Festival, and the Suncoast Jazz Festival, and new events like the Tigertail Asian Film Festival, which launched in 2024, and Clearwater’s lantern festival.

Highlights, happenings

St. Petersburg Museum Week kicks off Art Everywhere November 1st-8th. Throughout the week, the Penny Lane Beatles Museum presents “Here, There, and Everywhere,” a celebration of the Fab Four and the museum’s new St. Petersburg location. There will be live music, a film series, a featured speaker, and free admission during the day (mornings).

On November 6th, The Dali Museum hosts the opening-night celebration for the exhibition “Dalí: Disruption & Devotion,” a collaboration with the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston that explores Salvador Dalí’s artistic dialogue with influential European painters. 

On November 7th, the Museum of Fine Arts, St. Pete showcases the traveling exhibition “New African Masquerades: Artistic Innovations & Collaborations,” with a community celebration featuring hands-on artmaking, a panel discussion, dance performances, and traditional African food.

On November 8th, The Florida Holocaust Museum presents a salon performance of selected pieces from “RISE: The Rock Musical,” which chronicles the Kashariyot, young Jewish women who crossed Nazi checkpoints to arm the resistance.  An in-depth Q&A with the writer, composer, and director will follow the performance.

The James Museum of Western & Wildlife Art’s Native American Heritage Month Celebration is also on November 8th. The family-friendly event celebrates Indigenous peoples’ cultures, rich histories, and living traditions through art, music, dance, and storytelling.  Museum admission is free for the event.

Other events in St. Pete include the Cultured Books Literacy Foundation’s St. Pete Reads! Lit Fest on November 7th at the Woodson African American Museum of Florida, the Deuces After Dark Art + Culture Crawl on November 14th, and projectALCHEMY’s two-day dance event at Studio@620 on Nov. 20-21st. 

Print St. Pete’s community printmaking festival at Boyd Hill Nature Preserve is November 14th. Dancer Sami Mangione presents an immersive dance showcase, “KINETIC,” inside the Duncan McClellan Glass sculpture garden on November 14th. The Morean Workshop Space’s “Under One Canopy,” an interactive tree-like sculpture installation along the Pinellas Trail, invites the public to participate on November 5th, with a ribbon-cutting on December 4th. 

On November 14th, FloridaRAMA celebrates its fifth anniversary and launches a mobile museum in a “bespoke” Airstream trailer. Soft Water Gallery presents “Steeped in Sunshine: A Day of Florida-centric Art and Experiences” on November 7th. The Tigertail Asian Film Festival is November 14th and 17th. The Sunscreen Film Festival is November 28th. Tombolo Books is scheduling a “Books in the Burg” event. The Warehouse Arts District Association presents “Music Under the Stars,” an outdoor concert series of Latin music and dance on November 7 and 27 at ArtsXchange.

Thanksgiving weekend at Vinoy Park on St. Pete’s downtown waterfront, the massive two-day Shopapalooza festival will be a sea of local small businesses, artists, makers, vendors, and festival-goers. This year’s festival will use its grant to add a space for acoustic performances and an art installation on a staged boat along the waterfront.

Elsewhere, the Gulfport History Museum presents “TimeWeaving: Connecting Past and Future Through Dance, Storytelling and Labyrinths” on November 6th and 20th. On November 7th, the Dunedin Brewery presents “Unusual Noise: Music from the Edge of Florida,”  a “celebration of fearless musical collaboration featuring original performances, improvisation, and one-of-a-kind musical encounters.” Dunedin Public Theater presents “Candlelight & Strings,” a candlelight concert featuring music from the 1960s through today, on November 20-21.

Opera for Earth’s World Music Heritage Festival event is November 14th in Clearwater. The Safety Harbor Arts and Music Center’s “Creative Carnaval,” a weekend featuring concerts by award-winning national acts, live mural painting, parades, and interactive experiences, is scheduled for December 4th through 6th.  On Indian Rocks Beach, the Beach Art Center’s “Brushes on the Beach,” a “self-guided art trail of artists painting plein air, followed by a sunset celebration with live music, food, and a fresh-paint exhibition and art sale,” is December 5th. 

For more information, go to Art Everywhere