When dancer, educator, and arts advocate Helen French stepped into the role of Executive Director of the St. Pete Arts Alliance on August 1, she didn’t just inherit 16 programs, a citywide mural festival, and a three-person staff — she inherited a community in flux.
In this candid conversation, French pulls back the curtain on her first 70 days on the job — from the stress and gratitude (“I have more good days than bad days… I’m a mother of two”) to the deep, structural questions she’s asking about what St. Pete’s arts ecosystem needs now.
She talks about her Juilliard-bound ninth-grade spreadsheets, her early exposure to arts administration in New York, the founding of Beacon, and the creative muscle artists bring to leadership roles. Most importantly, she names the voids she sees — and how the Arts Alliance might fill them.
It’s a conversation about vision, advocacy, and the messy, beautiful work of building an arts city that actually supports the artists who live here.
