Joyce Hellmann Bizot

Background

About Joyce Hellmann Bizot

JOYCE HELLMANN BIZOT retired in 2006 as Senior Planner/ Project Manager with the Neighborhood Services Division, City of Jacksonville Florida. For more than two decades prior she was an urban planner in the Community Development Division and managed economic development, housing and human services projects. Throughout her career Joyce was involved in arts-related projects both in her work for the city and as a community leader and activist. She coordinated competitions for public art installations at seven community centers in Jacksonville and was part of the Save Outdoor Sculpture (SOS) committee which catalogued public art in Jacksonville. She also produced and managed performances in a variety of settings such as neighborfairs and community celebrations. As a dancer, Joyce choreographed and performed in numerous community and educational theater productions in her hometown of Louisville, KY, in South Bend, IN and in Jacksonville. Joyce created in 1981, and chaired through the Great American Jazz Piano Competition, part of the Jacksonville Jazz Festival. In 2009 she was inducted into the Jacksonville Jazz Hall of Fame.For ten years she was also an associate producer for competitions produced by the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz in Washington, DC. Joyce was on the original board of the Florida Ballet and currently serves on the executive committee of the Ritz Chamber Music Society. Joyce is a member of Leadership Jacksonville,Class of 1987 and Jacksonville Community Council, Inc. She is a past president of the League of Women Voters of Jacksonville / First Coast. Joyce and her husband Richard B. Bizot, emeritus professor of literature and founder of Irish Studies at the University of North Florida, are parents of two grown sons and have four grandsons.Specialties: Performing arts production, historic preservation planning, jazz, the music and its history.