COCA’s mission is to serve and support the community by promoting and advocating for arts and culture in Florida’s capital region.

COCA, the Council on Culture & Arts, is a non-profit organization that serves as the facilitator and voice for the arts and cultural industry in Florida’s capital area.  COCA provides information and promotes the arts and culture to both citizens and visitors.

If you are already lucky enough to already live here, we hope you find this website a place you return to often.

If you’re thinking of moving here, give us a call and we’ll be glad to introduce you to arts and culture in Tallahassee.

If you are a representative of a business researching a good place to locate your home base or satellite offices, you picked the right place to find out what a rich quality of life we enjoy.

If you are a visitor here for the football games, the legislature, or, on your way to see the Mouse, let us help you extend your stay in Tallahassee.

If this is not your first time here, welcome back. We hope we can be of service.

Here in the Capital City, like the magnificent oak trees that provide canopies to our roads and line our beautiful parks, our arts and culture has very strong roots.

Welcome to our town.

Just who is COCA

COCA has been serving the area since 1985.  Thirty years ago, the community created COCA as their designated local arts agency. The capital area’s only umbrella agency for arts and culture, COCA works with and for those who produce, invest in, and consume the arts and culture in the area.

COCA is not a government entity, but works hand-in-hand with the city, county, state, and local school district as their cultural industry partner.  The City and County contract with COCA to access their expertise and provide specific services that benefit the community at large.

You may notice that our board of directors is not made up primarily of artists nor do they represent any one cultural institution. That’s because the Florida statute by which COCA was founded expressly prohibits members from representing any one arts faction.  Instead, two practicing artists are members, and the remaining board members are outstanding private citizens with expertise in tourism, finance, business, economic development, marketing, and volunteering. The city and county commissions make appointments to the COCA Board from a list of three nominees sent to them by the COCA Board for consideration. These nominations have been vetted to fill the needs on the Board and assure that it is a broad representation of the community demographic.

COCA’s staff is where the professional arts expertise is found. This group of multi-talented multi-taskers have titles that may not give you enough information about the many hats they wear. For that reason you will find, in addition to their titles, a list of things that they each handle. We hope it will help you know who to call to get the information you need.

You won’t find a place to make a donation to COCA here, because as a part of its founding code, COCA was asked to refrain from seeking private funding for its own operating costs.

Yes, that is very hard to accomplish and sustain the work that is needed for our community but we believe it is the right restriction in the right place at the right time. Tallahassee and Leon County have some of the most generous small and mid-sized businesses in the country, who donate to the arts and cultural individual organizations and health and human services and the environment and animal rights and on and on.

Instead of seeking donations from those same donors, COCA does weekly research to help arts and cultural organizations and individual artists find funding and career opportunites.

We do have very important members that join COCA for a small fee and help us to continue our work.   We hope you will become a member, as well.  Your membership will provide you with lists and listings, e-mails with weekly events and opportunities, and reduced rates for COCA events. And, we offer valuable ad space and meeting space at very lower prices for members, too.

Be sure you learn more by wandering through every page on this informative web-site.  It may take you a while to see it all, but we like it when people keep coming back for more.

Start the adventure by returning to the Home Page and clicking on one of the portals.