Ybor’s Artists and Writers Group Seeks to Reinvent Itself for New Generation

The Artists and Writers Group’s roots are found in the “Artists and Writers Ball,” an annual event in the late 1970s and 1980s in Tampa’s arts district and historical old town Ybor City. Today, the Artists and Writers Group is seeking to reinvent itself, and a new website through the Social Justice Fund offered the first step.

Before the Artists and Writers Group came about, not many parties sought to re-create outer space in the Cuban Club, a four-floor historic building built in 1917 in Ybor City. While the balls were visual eye candy — thanks to the playful imagination of the fearless leader, David Audet — they were also an effort to upset the social strata of Tampa society.

Theirs was not the segregated, all-male Gasparilla Parade but rather an all-inclusive ball of silliness and pure joy amid four floors of music. What mattered most to those who put on the event was new and different ideas in play. It was a unique and nurturing focus in the Ybor arts district, an enclave inhabited at the time by a colony of like-minded individuals — artists!

Back then, the “Ball” spoofed the mardi gras atmosphere of Tampa’s better-known Gasparilla parties. Each ball featured a theme guaranteed to inspire the most outrageous costumes and satirical musical performances and skits. At its heyday, the “Artists and Writers Ball” filled all four floors of Ybor City’s Cuban Club with several thousand of the faithful.

Older and a little tamer now, The Artists and Writers Group has transformed itself into a nonprofit organization dedicated to producing films, art, literature, and performance events for Tampa Bay area residents.

Today the Artists and Writers Group is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit group with a mission:

The Artists and Writers Group aims to develop and nurture cultural events that contribute a positive and meaningful experience to our community.

As an organization open to all like-minded individuals, the Artists and Writers Group respects our community’s creative and cultural diversity. It is committed to equality, peace, and social and economic justice. The Artists and Writers Group aspires to provide events and forums to serve the community by exposing and sharing these values.

We are currently re-assessing our purpose and planning for new experiences to upset the social strata. Realizing that artists have historically led by envisioning necessary social change, we feel the call to resurrect our creative work during these uncertain times.

So we move forward with three powerful goals:

• Encourage, support, and work with those artists in the Tampa Bay area who engage in disruptive and intersectional creativity.
• Produce more community and place-based events.
• Stimulate our communal and social imagination.