Actor, director, writer and producer Bob Devin Jones co-founded Studio@620 in St. Petersburg with David Ellis two decades ago.
WUSF interviewed Jones for our series highlighting important people during Black History Month.
The following is an edited transcript of that interview, in which Jones tells us about the start of the studio in 2004 and how important the arts are for the Black community.
St. Petersburg’s artistic renaissance
We just wanted a place for the community to gather without hurt, harm or danger. That was all and we eventually morphed into the answer always being "Yes."
So "yes" became our idea, it became our motto, and then it became our mission. The answer is always "yes." So that way, if you were an established artist, emerging artist, not yet an artist... we said "yes."
I don't know if things were lacking in in terms of going across differences and intersectionalities and all of that. I just know that there was not a place to hang and talk and discuss and perhaps debate.
And we knew because we had social justice round tables. We had our first exhibition was "Grandma's Hands, 100 years of African American Quilting." We had quilting circles. We had gospel brunches.
And it just all melded together, and what we did was hold a mirror up to the community, and found that there was just tons of riches there. We didn't have to worry about programming. There was opportunity. So that's how we succeeded.
In the southeast portion of this country, I believe it's this little city of I don't know, less than 300,000 people of St Petersburg, we have an embarrassment of riches for a city of our size and it appears to just keep growing and growing.
Black Leisure Matters
There's an African American spiritual song. It might even be gospel. It's called How I Got Over. Mahalia Jackson, very famously, did it. And I think there was a movement and still is called BLM: Black Lives Matter, but Black Leisure Matters, too. So that's BLM.
We can't always just be on the barricados, demanding cajoling, requesting civil, human rights. Sometimes you have to jar the floor with, "Yes I am," and, "Yes I'm going to be.”
So, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, or Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone, If Beale Street Could Talk - these are James Baldwin books… or Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, or the Beloved… or Zora Neale Hurston. We need all kinds of uplift, but creatively, hopefully you're inspired.
And inspired is like a fuel that kind of supercharges you from one thing to the next, and can surf ride you through a lot of adversity, challenges and you may manifest this song How I Got Over, and this is how I did.
And so, I think arts are integral, essential and delicious and should be consumed on a daily basis.
So, I feel that we've rounded that corner, and they're sustainable and people see the efficacy of them, despite what the prevailing winds might be… arts are like that little chute that comes up through the concrete… needs a little water, but it'll survive.
