I think it is important for every artist to consider what it takes to make the Downtown Denver Arts Festival a Colorado only show. As we come up on the deadline for applications (February 28), I want to say the quality of the artists is exciting and the number of artists applying is encouraging.
One question that keeps coming up from the artists is am I going to keep the festival ‘Colorado Only’? This is a decision that is not left up to me alone. Early on I said to all of you (in this Blog) that this is your show, not mine, so your support and involvement in all aspects of the show will make it the show we all want. What I find interesting is artists who are concerned about the show staying ‘Colorado Only’ but at the same time are taking a ‘wait and see’ attitude before applying. As a fellow artist I certainly understand taking that stance when a show has a change of management or has some other changes happen (change of dates, venue, etc.). But with a show that depends solely on the support of local artisans, ‘wait and see’ does not work.
Let’s look at the numbers. A national show will draw anywhere from 500 to 1200 applications (larger shows will draw over 2,000). The Downtown Denver Arts Festival can expect, on the high side, 300 applications. More realistically, that number is closer to 200. Now, imagine that 2/3 of the artists who would apply say, ‘I’ll wait a year and see how it goes’. Now the show has only 66 applications for a show that has 135 booth spaces. I know a lot of us aren’t great in math but even I know this would not work. At this point, let me be clear that the number of applications has been good. I am simply asking that all artists who want this show to succeed in the future as Colorado only, step up and apply. This is not up to a few to make the show succeed. And I alone cannot make the decision as to how this show will look in the future. We have a great show that has a great history of success. I am working diligently every day to make the show grow and become the show many of us knew it could be.
To be open to all of you about my involvement as director, I took this job with no guarantee of a paycheck. There will be no salary for me if the show does not succeed financially, so I am not asking you to do anything more that I haven’t asked of myself and that is to support the show. For those quick with a calculator and think that the show is making a lot of money off of booth fees, the facts are the show needs about twice what comes in from booth fees to run at the level we want it to run, so the booth fees are not a lot of money.
I want to thank all of you for reading all of this (I thought I could do this with less words!) and also know that I am very excited about the quantity and quality of the artists that I am seeing apply this year. I just feel strongly that all artists need to support the future of this show and not wait to see what happens. What will happen is the show will end up being open to National artists and many Colorado artists will blame some individual for this decision.
So to answer my opening question, Colorado Only means only Colorado Artists can make this show succeed.
