Prepare for the Weather Promoter Shares Advice for Artists
Thankfully, we do not have to deal with snow or hurricanes due to the time of year our festival takes place. However, we have had our share of excessive heat and everything from light rain to total washouts.
Our first year was 2021. We planned for April that year but had to postpone the festival to June due to the COVID-19 pandemic. We had 90+ degree days that weekend, and heat was a problem.
We always give out free water and snacks to the artists throughout the show, so most people kept hydrated. We had one person show up without a tent that we allowed to exhibit anyway. Sure enough, one of the owners was affected by the heat.
We always have EMTs stationed, so it was not a crisis. But we are now stricter and enforce a 100% tent policy.
One year, we had a thunderstorm that started about two hours before the show ended. We closed the show 90 minutes early that day to ensure everyone’s safety.
In 2023, the second day of our show was quite cold and had heavy rain. We sent messages to all the artists saying that staying open was their choice, but the show itself would remain open.
We had a major entertainment band lined up for that day, and the performance was rain or shine, so we went ahead. And while probably 90% of the artists packed up and left, those who stuck it out reported great sales that day. We use eventeny.com as our event planning and application software, and that platform allows us to easily communicate with the artists.
The park we have as a venue tends to be windy. We require all vendors to have adequate tent weights for their tents, and we provide links for things like sandbag weights in our artist information packet as examples of what is appropriate. We are clear in our communications about the chances of wind issues during the show.
All our artists are required to have a liability policy. We partner with ACT Insurance every year, and they can provide policies as inexpensive as $40 for the weekend. We carry a liability policy for the event as well, but neither of those policies covers artist’s equipment or works.
Advice for Artists
Our area's weather is temperate even in the winter. With our show being at the end of April, temperature extremes are an exceptionally low occurrence.
Rain and wind are always our biggest challenges. We encourage vendors to bring sidewalls for their tents, but they are not required.
We also let artists rent tents from our equipment vendor. These are always professionally installed and are event-grade tents — not simple pop-up tents — that come with sidewalls.
I had not considered going so far in our recommendations as to include things like raingear. However, that is good food for thought, and I will likely add a paragraph about this to our artist information document this year.
I have heard from artists about how thankful they were that we gave them the option last year to pack up early. I have been told a lot of shows force artists to stay open if the show is ongoing, but we just did not feel right making the artists risk their works.
Some artists can display just fine in the rain (ceramics, jewelry, glass, etc.). But for others, it is much riskier (paintings, drawings, etc.). And so, we will always leave it open to the artist’s discretion to stay open or not during a weather event.