Orange Blossom Award: The Quiet Producer

Jarrett Haas, owner of Palm Tree Content and the quietly indispensable producer behind The Arts Passport podcast—holding space, holding the tech, and making sure other people’s stories get the spotlight. Photo credit: Palm Tree Content

by Avery Anderson

When people talk about “giving artists a voice,” they usually mean the visible parts: the microphone, the camera, the finished clip that pops up in your feed. What they rarely talk about is the person who made sure the microphone worked, the audio didn’t glitch, the footage didn’t disappear into a corrupted hard drive, and the whole thing actually got finished.

This Orange Blossom Award goes to Jarrett Haas, owner of Palm Tree Content and the producer behind The Arts Passport podcast—one of those people whose work is everywhere and whose name almost never is.

When The Arts Passport was just getting off the ground, the goal was simple and wildly ambitious: create space for as many artists as possible to tell their stories, in their own words, without polish stripping away the truth. The podcast became an obvious vehicle for that mission—but “obvious” and “easy” are not the same thing.

Podcasts look deceptively simple. Two chairs. A mic. Maybe a camera if you’re feeling fancy. In reality, someone has to own the equipment. Someone has to know how to use it. Someone has to troubleshoot audio issues, balance lighting, manage files, edit hours of footage, and turn a raw conversation into something people actually want to listen to.

That someone was Jarrett.

When we reached out about working together, there was no hemming and hawing. No scheduling gymnastics. No “let me circle back.” It was an immediate yes. He showed up prepared, set everything up, and quietly made the whole operation feel possible before it felt inevitable.

And then there’s the part that matters most.

Jarrett didn’t just produce the podcast. He covered the production costs. He footed the bill for the equipment, the editing, the time—without turning it into a transaction, without asking for credit, without attaching strings. In an ecosystem where artists are constantly asked to work for exposure, Jarrett did the opposite. He invested.

Because of that generosity, The Arts Passport didn’t just launch a podcast. It created a platform. Nearly two dozen artists—actors, directors, administrators, creatives who rarely get a long-form moment—have been able to sit down, breathe, and tell their stories in full. Not in a pull quote. Not in a caption. In their own voices.

This award isn’t for flash or branding or buzzwords. It’s for infrastructure. For belief. For the kind of behind-the-scenes support that doesn’t trend but absolutely transforms.

Jarrett Haas is the kind of collaborator every arts community needs: responsive, skilled, generous, and deeply uninterested in being the loudest person in the room. And because of that, so many other voices have been heard.

That’s what the Orange Blossom Awards are about.

What Are the Orange Blossom Awards?

A month-long series from The Arts Passport celebrating the people and organizations whose quiet, steady work strengthens Tampa Bay’s arts ecosystem. No applications. No campaigning. Just community-driven recognition, released daily in December.