NWA Times Article: Organizers have new plan for Arts Festival (April 26, 2006)

Organizers have new plan for Arts Festival

BY DREW TERRY, Northwest Arkansas Times April 26, 2006

A new format could allow patrons to attend more performances at this year’s Fayetteville Arts
Festival.

It doesn’t take place until September, but organizers already have spent months on festival planning, including a decision to spread the event over the course of two weekends. They may appear to be separate productions at first glance, but officials with Fayetteville Downtown Partners, the host organization, warn against being misled.

“It’s one identity; it’s the Fayetteville Arts Festival, and it happens to be produced over two weekends,” said Daniel Hintz, executive director of Downtown Partners.

“If it starts to be looked at as two separate events, it loses the potential of becoming an event that happens over the span of an entire week, and the idea is to grow it into a week.”

Events for Sept. 1-3 will focus largely on the visual art component of the festival, with artists’ booths to be set up indoors this year in the Fayetteville Town Center.

Relocating from an outdoor location is among the changes to be implemented this year after organizers sifted through feedback in multiple sessions.

Another is expanding the number of categories in which visual artists can be awarded.

A “best of fest,” or overall winner, will be awarded $1,000, but new this year will be grand prizes of $250 and runner-up prizes of $100 in both the two-dimensional and three-dimensional fields.

Winners will be announced Sept. 2 at an evening celebration.

A preview party on Sept. 1 will kick off the festival, with proceeds going to support the event.

“It’s an opportunity for people to see the booths and hopefully get some pre-sales arranged,” Hintz said. “It’s a big celebration of the artists’ work. I like to look at it like a gallery opening.”

Several other eventswill take place during the first weekend of September, presenting several affiliation opportunities for Downtown Partners.

They’re working with the Fayetteville Farmers’ Market and merchants on the Square, Hintz said, and hope to ensure visitors for the University of Arkansas’ football game against Southern Cal are made aware of the events taking place.

“They’re going to come away saying, ‘Man, Fayetteville’s a hopping place,’ and that’s exactly what we want,” Hintz said. The registration is May 12 for visual artists. Interested artists can apply online at www.fayettevillearts.org or call Downtown Partners at 571-3337.

Downtown Partners has mailed out more than 2,000 applications, including 934 to artists in Arkansas in an effort to bolster participation among more local artists.

A deadline has yet to be set for participants in the performance arts events, which will take place Sept. 8-9.Among the presentations will be dance programs, poetry, spoken word, play workshops, and a 24-hourplay festival — which will begin on Friday and end with Saturday performances.

A new addition this year will be a youth 40-hour play festival, which will begin Thursday and conclude Saturday. Participants, who must be younger than 18, will be mentored by professional theater artists from Theatre Squared and Arts Live Theater.

The second segment of the festival will end with a performance theater party. Locations have yet to be determined for events on Sept. 8-9, but Hintz hopes they will take place somewhere along Dickson Street.

The arts festival last year spanned an entire week, which immersed the city in art opportunities but also presented a challenge for Downtown Partners. By reformatting the festival to two weekends, organizers hope to build upon past success and eventually create a weeklong event.

“It was a response from last year,” Hintz said. “A lot of people said there’s a lot of stuff they thought was cool, but they couldn’t go to all of it.

“It was a huge endeavor last year to do it for a full week. … The weekends were the biggest things, the weekdays, we still have some growing to do there. But the idea is to grow into the week.”

Organizers have new plan for Arts Festival (Acrobat PDF)