ABOUT GBAC

BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Kim Hall   -  President
Anne Drewry   -  Vice President
Minnette Webster   -  Secretary
Walter Kuck   -  Treasurer
Meletha Everett   -  Membership Chairman
Charity   -  Webmaster

BOARD MEMBERS

Lisa Rodriguez   - Media Team, Representing Center Place
Rose Smith   - Media Team
Gunni Price    - 
Charlene S. Jones   - Hospitality Coordinator (arts educator)
Laura Perez   -   Representing the younger generation
Cheryl Kuck   -  


HISTORY

We in the Brandon area (which includes Valrico, Seffner, Mango,
Riverview and Lithia) have quite a few dance schools, music schools and theatre companies that need a place to perform. We also have visual artists who need venues. We have many extremely talented people of all ages who
need to find a way to reach the general public in our community. We have a large community that likes to eat out in restaurants attend various activities and would prefer not to drive all the way to Tampa for culture and entertainment. We had heard that Senator Tom Lee had proposed an "Advantage Center" that would be a gathering space for our community and hoped that we could influence this building to be a home for our community's arts groups. In order to do this it was suggested we have an advocate for the arts. The advocate we envisioned was an Arts Council and we decided to form a steering committee that would form this Arts Council. Candace Knapp and Anne Drewry were chosen as chairmen for this Steering Committee.

May 30, 2006
We met at the Greater Brandon Chamber of Commerce offices. Art Keeble,
chairman of the Hillsborough County Arts Council spoke to us about what an arts council does and encouraged us to form one of our own . He promised to help us as much as possible.

June 26, 2006
Candace Knapp, Anne Drewry and Björn Andren met Ron Pierce at Senator Tom Lee's office and collected information about the proposed "Advantage Center" for Brandon.

July 5, 2006
Anne Drewry and Kay Sullivan were on a cable TV show talking about our plans for an Arts Council in the Brandon area.

July 6, 2006
We met at the Brandon Chamber offices. We went over the list of things we need to do to form a non-profit organization.

Candace Knapp reported on the "Advantage Center" and it was suggested that we present an outline of our community's needs to the URS Company that is doing the study for the "Advantage Center". Suggestions were made of other activities we might do such as an Arts Directory, mentoring for young artists and trying to get more quality art books and cds in our local library.

August 1, 2006
Helen Soloman who helped to form the South Shore Arts Council was our guest speaker. At this meeting we voted on our name "Greater Brandon Arts Council".

September 14, 2006
At this meeting the mission statement was finalized. We had voted on it by    E-mail over the previous two weeks. We decided on the titles and duties of all of our officers and suggestions of likely candidates were discussed.

October 9, 2006
We met at the Brandon Chamber offices. Most of our board members and
officers were elected. A few more were elected later.

November 8th, 2006
Many of our officers were given a tour of the University Community Center.
Senator Victor Crist , who helped found the center , spent over two hours with us giving us advice and encouragement on how to advocate for a community cultural center in our area.

December 11, 2006
We became incorporated in the state of Florida under the name Greater Brandon Arts Council Inc. We adopted our by-laws and voted to approve our new Logo designed by Björn Andrén.