About Us

How It All Started

On June 7, 1983, the City of Clinton's Mayor and Board of Aldermen adopted a Resolution designating the Arts Council of Clinton, Inc., as "the official arts agency for the City of Clinton, to develop, promote, and coordinate the arts in the Clinton community." The Arts Council of Clinton, Inc. received its 501(c)(3) status from the Internal Revenue Service on June 12, 1985.

The Arts Council's first free public event, "A Taste of the Arts," was held on October 15, 1983 in Lions Club Park. The event, designed to highlight Clinton's wealth of artistic talent, showcased musicians, visual artists, dancers, vocalists, craftsmen, and puppeteers throughout the day and culminated in a white elephant auction to benefit the newly formed Arts Council of Clinton, Inc. The project, supported jointly by a grant from the Mississippi Arts Commission and the National Endowment for the Arts, marked the beginning of the Arts Council's successful endeavors for the arts in the Clinton area.