Voices that Inspire

What inspires you? From WFSU Public Media, here's this week's voices that inspire. My name is Dr. Audra Pryce Pittman. I am the Executive Director for the Council on Culture and Arts, also known as COCA. My hope with this organization is to really raise the awareness of the arts and all the cool things that are going on in our community. We serve kind of as a clearinghouse for the arts, so we like to promote everything from the big organizations to the small organizations. And I really want people to understand the relevance of the arts. That is not just just only high brow thing or something that only certain people love and appreciate, but is something for everybody. A lot of times it's often your neighbors or your co-workers or people that are actually involved in the arts and you may not even know it. My job is definitely to advocate, promote, encourage, inspire people to really think about the arts as something that is not just, oh I'll try that out and I'm done, but it's like this could be your day-to-day life. I'm looking at a young talent coming out of the university saying, hey we're starting this group, we're having an opening. I'm like, wow, they're really inspired to start something before they even graduate. And seeing that people are really encouraged and feeling like, oh I'll get support if I just start it or they can come to Koka and say, hey help me with marketing efforts, you know, who do I talk to? And really people who are embracing their community and realizing like, I can get a lot of things done here in Tallahassee because everyone's involved and wants to help out. I've lived probably seven to eight states, I can't even count and this is the first time that I've really been able to say, hey I can make a difference in the community I live in by getting involved, meeting people I've never met before, hearing their stories and wow there's still so much more I have to learn, I've barely scratched the surface. This is Dr. Audrey Price-Pitman, Executive Director, Council on Culture and Arts, the arts live here. Voices that inspire is sponsored by Leadership Tallahassee, a program of the Tallahassee Chamber celebrating 35 years of cultivating community leadership.