The SHINE St. Petersburg Mural Festival was one of the first things that excited my partner and me about living in St. Petersburg, when we moved here a couple years ago. Having come from NYC my stakes were impossibly high, but SHINE presented something extraordinarily unique. This was beyond Brooklyn street art, something I’d never really seen outside of Burning Man: a community coming together for the love of art, and art coming together to celebrate community. We saw a city we could be proud to call home, a place that gets it, with people walking out of their businesses to bring drinks to artists who were working in the hot Florida sun, and bypassers and onlookers stepping up to help out as needed. It was the first time we caught a glimpse of what really makes St. Pete special. Community is at the center of this awesome art festival, which is almost entirely run by passionate, dedicated volunteers, and it is truly something beautiful to behold.
So much goes into making the SHINE Festival shine year after year. Major sponsors and supporters, like The City of St. Petersburg (Founding Sponsor), Salt Palm Development (Presenting Sponsor), Kolter Urban, Great Bay Distributors, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, the Tampa Bay Rays, DTSP Courtyard Marriott, Sunbelt, Smart Move Moving & Storage, Hype Group, Bruce Denson, Kathryn Howd, and especially Mayor Kriseman, are the backbone of the festival, but community support gives it life.
According to SHINE Festival Program Director, Jenee Priebe, a few star local businesses have really made this year’s festival exceptional. There is Coast Bike Share, who has wrapped their bike baskets with local artists’ work, and are running the Official Shine Bike Tour, and MADE Coffee and Mother Kombucha, who have donated their products to artists involved in the project. Black Crow Coffee Co. and a number of other coffee shops have placed SHINE donation buckets on their counters to help raise funds for the festival, and a donor who wishes to remain anonymous even wrote a check directly to artist Ya La’Ford, to pay for her paint! Then, of course, there’s Green Bench Monthly (!), who created the fantastic mural map you may have seen around town, and which ran in last month’s issue.
The art itself is brilliant, but community is what makes it SHINE! Visit greenbenchmonthly.com/shine-2018 to check out the festival map, and  stpeteartsalliance.org/shine-mural-festival/ for more info about the St. Pete Arts Alliance.
