ARTS & CULTURE
Where Stars Are Born
Pinellas County Center For the Arts BY CINDY STOVALL Driving south in St. Pete on US Highway 19, you pass familiar local businesses - beauty shops, hardware stores, meat markets and restaurants. They are part of the scenic imprint in our minds whenever we think about neighborhood. Yet, somehow, many of us are unaware of the star incubator that exists in the middle of this unassuming world.
at St. Petersburg High School, and the Artistically Talented Program (now PCCA) was installed at Gibbs.
Somewhere around 13th Avenue South, just after you pass a tire shop on the east side, an expansive school campus stretches out before you. The lines of the buildings slope and turn in pleasing ways. It’s pretty for a place of learning. But did you know that history has been made at Gibbs High School time and time again? Historic Beginnings Gibbs was originally built in 1927. The imperative was to provide the first free secondary education to black students in Pinellas County. Appropriately, it was named for Jonathan Clarkson Gibbs - an African American who was Superintendent of Public Instruction and Secretary of State in Florida during Reconstruction. Those early students got a long overdue opportunity to learn beyond the 6th grade - to realize previously unthought-of potential. They held proms at the Manhattan Casino. And like the Manhattan, Mercy Hospital, The Royale Theater and many more iconic buildings, Gibbs became part of a community that was kept separate and apart from life north of Central Avenue. Fast forward to post-integration era circa 1979. A visionary county administrator felt a need for emphasis in the arts and, with that impulse, a new historic step for Gibbs began. A representative traveled to Dallas to monitor arts programming. After sharing his findings with key Gibbs personnel, model programs for the entire state of Florida were formed for artistically and academically talented students and shared with 67 county school administrators. By 1984, the Academically Talented Program (now IB) was installed
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StPeteLifeMag.com
March/April 2020
How Stars are Born So, how does it work? In addition to standard high school academic courses, students enrolled in the Pinellas County Center for the Arts, having passed audition, are offered highly specialized arts classes that uniquely prepare them to meet their future potential and to give them real world advantages toward that end. The categories for students accepted for admission are Dance (modern dance and ballet), Music (vocal, instrumental and piano), Theater (performance, musical, tech and literary) and Visual Arts (painting, sculpting, photography, printmaking and ceramics). Instructors not only teach the courses, but mentor students one on one. Master classes are offered by visiting experts in any given discipline. Arts shows and staged performances are meticulously presented each semester at very high levels of execution on par with professionals. Workshops on real world arts infrastructure are frequent and strategies for future success, including in college, is always a part of the discussion. I have had the honor of interviewing a number of PCCA graduates over the past six seasons of The Beauty & The ‘Burg podcast. Some have molded great careers right here at home and some have attained accolades nationally and internationally. But they had help along the way. Two faculty members have come up consistently in these interviews as sources of great inspiration and support. Keven Renken is the current chair of the theater department and has been with Gibbs for 31 years. He has been a pioneering force in the development of what is now considered one of the premier theater programs in the state. Did you know you can see productions, twice a year, for around $10? That’s a no brainer for your theater budget. “PCCA has been a centerpoint in my life for a long time,” says Renken. “Watching these talented kids reach their potential and to
