S. Florida Receives Cultural Excellence Award

South Florida Cultural Consortium Receives

Regional Excellence Award For Regional Governance

(Pictured L-R): Bill Nix, Vice President, Marketing and Government Affairs, Palm Beach County Cultural Council; Michael Spring, Director, Miami-Dade Department of Cultural Affairs; Nancy Turrell, Executive Director, The Arts Council, Inc. of Stuart & Martin County; Mary Becht, Director, and Jim Shermer, Grants Administrator, Broward Cultural Division

BROWARD COUNTY , FL – The South Florida Cultural Consortium is the South Florida Regional Resource Center's (SFRRC) Regional Governance Award winner for 2006. The distinction recognizes one or more public sector entities that work across jurisdictional boundaries and collaborate for more effective and efficient use of regional resources.

In conferring the award, the SFRRC specifically highlighted one of the South Florida Cultural Consortium's professional development and outreach programs – the Winter Institute in Arts Management seminar series. The South Florida Cultural Consortium engaged the University of Massachusetts/Arts Extension Service (UMass/AES) to present its Winter Institute in Arts Management Program (WIAM) in South Florida from 2003-2006. Each of the three separate regional convenings of the 3-day Winter Institute rotated annually between Broward, Miami-Dade and Palm Beach counties. The South Florida Cultural Consortium worked with UMass/AES to develop a tailored curriculum that directly addressed professional and organizational development issues confronting local artists and arts groups, to help South Florida's comparatively "young" cultural community build greater capacity and stability, while continuously enhancing the artistic product. Through its resources, the South Florida Cultural Consortium subsidized every South Florida organization and artist that attended the Winter Institute, providing more than 185 full scholarships in all over the three years.

The SFRRC is a partnership between the Center for Urban & Environmental Solutions (CUES) at Florida Atlantic University, the Collins Center for Public Policy, Inc., the South Florida Regional Planning Council, and the Treasure Coast Regional Planning Council. The SFRRC, through its partners, works to ensure that local groups, partner organizations, and other public and private regional entities work collaboratively together to shape regional public policy in South Florida. " The South Florida Cultural Consortium is a regional player in developing the arts and culture, and boosting the economics, marketing and image of the South Florida Region," says James F. Murley, director of the CUES.

The South Florida Cultural Consortium is an alliance of the local arts agencies of five South Florida counties – Broward, Martin, Miami-Dade, Monroe and Palm Beach. Formed in 1985, the South Florida Cultural Consortium fosters, creates and sustains inter-county cooperation and cultural development by sharing resources and coordinating projects to advance artistic excellence, growth, creative collaborations, programming and activities throughout the region. The South Florida Cultural Consortium is funded in part with the support of the National Endowment for the Arts, the Florida Department of State Division of Cultural Affairs and the Florida Arts Council, the Boards of County Commissioners of Broward, Martin, Miami-Dade and Monroe Counties, and the Palm Beach County Cultural Council.

For additional information concerning the South Florida Cultural Consortium, contact Deborah Margol, Deputy Director, Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs and program director, South Florida Cultural Consortium at 305-375-4634. For additional information on SFRRC, contact George Gadson, coordinator, South Florida Regional Resource Center at 954-762-5623 or ggadson@fau.edu .

A people's art is the genesis of their freedom

Claudia Jones, Founder, London

Carnival, 1959

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