United Arts Collier wants people to understand how integral arts are to Collier County, and it’s starting education on a large scale: through local business.

The Arts & Business Council of Collier County was born this month, with its first informational meeting Jan. 23 at the Norris Community Center. Few businesses were at the meeting, but Elysia Dawn, executive director of United Arts Collier, said the UAC had already held query sessions with several major employers here who indicated they’re open to the idea.

“There was a little bit of behind-the-scenes work where we had people come together and asked them what they would like to see for us going forward,” Dawn explained. “They said they would like to see this — where they get a better understanding and how it benefits us. And then from there we’ll start to do meetings.”

An idea with urgency

The immediate incentive behind this push for support came from the financial thrashing arts took this past year. Nonprofit arts organizations in Collier County were asked to whack their grant requests by about 9% before commissioners even looked at them. Before that, Gov. Ron DeSantis axed all funding under the state’s Division of Arts and Culture, shorting Collier County groups by roughly $1.5 million.

Collier County nonprofit arts organizations are benefiting the community financially. The arts alone stimulated $147.1 million in spend- ing even apart from ticket prices in Collier, according to its most recent figures from a 2022 Americans for the Arts study. But arts haven’t hit the gong with governmental bodies, despite accounting for $3.9 million in local tax revenue, $2.9 million in state tax revenue and $22.5 million in federal taxes.

So the arts community of Southwest Florida has been brainstorming ways to imprint the importance of the arts, and to get strong, vocal support for them more broadly. The concept of an arts and business council is one of several arts organizations are undertaking, which include:

• Working with John Melleky, the arts and culture manager of the county’s Convention & Visitors Bureau, to make their points clear.

• Bringing their needs to the Collier County Delegation session, an annual pre-legislative forum which brings together all state legislators whose districts include part of Collier County. Dawn spoke at the Jan. 8 session.

• Joining what has been dubbed Tallahassee Arts Days, March 11 and 12, led by the Florida Cultural Alliance. During those two days, arts groups schedule meetings with elected officials and their staffs and hold rallies to call attention to their cause.

They got some solid observations at the Jan. 23 meeting from one of their own, Mark Nerenhausen, a UAC board member who also served as president of the Hennepin Theatre Trust in Minneapolis and as CEO of the AT&T Performing Arts Center in Dallas.

“This project amazes me and intrigues me,” he said of the new council. “Everyone here deserves congratulations for what you’ve accomplished on the part of the city, on the part of the business community and all the sectors that are represented here.” However, he added, both the arts community and the council needed to focus on where they wanted to go with this partnership. Getting more financial support for the arts could be a result, “an important one, but those might not be the destination,” he said. Using partnerships with businesses as social influencers on government is short-term thinking, he said.

The very name Arts & Business Council suggested to him “that we are two separate sectors finally coming together to meet across the table.” It doesn’t match what the studies had indicated, he said — that the arts are interwoven with business in a thriving economy.

“We’re here to focus on the ‘we.’ This is not about separate entities.”

It’s already happening

There are models for that synergy already. The arts have long been known for drawing people out for dinner or drinks on Fifth Avenue after a Sunday afternoon Cambier Park concert or before a play at Sugden Theatre or Gulfshore Playhouse. Opera Naples’ Festival under the Stars, beginning Feb. 28, brings in hotel guests from across the state for its opera and vocal performances.

Arts organizations and artists are also working with Naples and Collier County businesses in other, quieter ways:

• Building owners have employed artists, most notably in the Bayshore Arts District, to add murals to their buildings. That organization also has combined several arts events with builders’ open houses in that area.

• The Naples Players have been operating a program for years that helps young people with intellectual and emotional challenges develop social skills and become workforce- ready.

• Gulfshore Playhouse has begun offering classes for local corporations on verbal delivery skills, training employees in how to make effective presentations and develop teams.

“It’s totally work that brings the arts savvy and skills [for them], from lawyers to businesspeople. People need to learn how to make a good speech and be compelling,” said Kristen Coury, Gulfshore Playhouse CEO and producing artistic director.

Collier County arts were already setting the tone for arts support, thanks to the Collier Community Foundation decision to award grants totaling $240,000 to arts groups after they lost state funding. The idea for an arts and business council also is in the forefront of good arts stewardship, said Jennifer Jones, CEO of the Florida Cultural Alliance, who addressed the meeting.

“What Collier County did for the arts in the wake of that veto — there are very few places in the state where the communities and municipalities stepped up like they did,” she said.

Jones could count fewer than five counties, most of them in metropolitan areas, that had such arts and business councils.

“Collier is doing some very impressive things,” she said.