Putting on a Show A Perspective as an Artist and a Promoter
I missed you last issue! I hope your show season is going well, and sales have been good!
Since my last article, we successfully completed our first art show here in Jefferson and much of the summer has flown by. This issue, I thought I would talk about what I learned from running an art show and the lessons I think that we, as artists, can take away from it.
Beautiful Day
For those who have not read some of my earlier articles, our Main Street Association sponsored and ran our first art fair in June — Jefferson’s Best Dam Art Fair (yes, we have a dam). We did a lot of work leading up to it, including getting the City Council to change an ordinance, approve a street closing, get our state’s Department of Transportation to sign off on the street closing, recruit artists, advertise, and all the other things one must do.
All-in-all, we had great success! Though small (we had about 40 artists), we had a great turnout for a first-year event (approximately 1,000 to 1,200 shoppers), and we are well-positioned to grow the event for next year.
The weather was perfect, our volunteers were wonderful, the artists did an excellent job, and most of them (more than 75%, according to our survey responses) were incredibly happy with their sales. Though it was a long day (we started at 5 a.m.), it was great to see the street transition from a blank canvas to a tent city and then back to a bare street — all in the same day.
The amount of work everyone puts into a successful art show is incredible if you think about it. The promoters, volunteers, municipality’s employees, and the artists put in months of work, and the results of it come and go in one day.
Our advertising campaign (we spent approximately 70% of our budget on social media advertising and even boosted ads featuring each of our artists) was successful on many levels However, we learned of the need to increase our efforts locally using traditional media as well (posters, banners, etc.).
Even though we have been trained to think everyone is on social media, the truth is many people in our customer base are not. Do not forget the traditional methods of getting the word out.
Most art shows create an aisle with artists on both sides of the street, and the customers walk down the middle. Rather than have the artists up against the curbs and the traffic flow down the middle, we put the artists in the middle, facing out toward the stores.
This encouraged shoppers to look at all the artists rather than dart back and forth. It also allowed our businesses to be highlighted and made them happy about the free advertising. Everyone — artists and business owners — indicated they appreciated this setup.
Load-in and load-out were managed by having one entry point and allowing traffic to flow on both sides of the show footprint. Artists unloaded at their spot and then moved their vehicles to the artist parking area.
This kept everyone moving swiftly, and no one had to haul things from their car to their spot more than a few feet. At the show’s end, we required everyone to do a total teardown and then get a hall pass from one of our volunteers to bring their vehicle back onto the show footprint, so they could load up right at their spot.
It kept traffic moving and prevented anyone from just bringing their car in and blocking traffic while they dismantled their display. Most artists loved this as it kept everyone moving and no one got stuck waiting.
Feedback from the artists was almost entirely positive. We already have a number of them who have reserved their spot for next year!
