Organising An Escape ARTfest Event

The following advice has been compiled based on feedback from venues, artists and customers in previous years.

Key Benefits

• Increased exposure for the artist & the opportunity to showcase your work to a new audience.
• Increased exposure for the business venue.
• Involvement in a dynamic & diverse event, improving the cultural life of our community.
• Opportunity to network with other artists, venues, businesses.
• The overall event draws visitors to our area which has far reaching benefits for everyone involved.
• Opportunity to be involved in a unique event that embraces many sectors of our community including businesses, artists, schools, youth, indigenous and the general public.
• Opportunity to experience and enjoy a variety of artistic events, other than your own! Escape ARTfest is a wonderfully exhausting time to indulge in many creative adventures.

What to expect

Escape Artfest comprises 10 days of arts activity, starting on the Friday of the October Long Weekend. This will be followed by a predominantly music-focused weekend including Milton Music Fest, Theatre performances and The Lions Living Craft Show among others. Mid-week offers the opportunity for culture-lovers to visit the many exhibition venues, workshops and demonstrations, including the Milton Gallery Walk, Artfest Awards & Slide Night, literary events and prize displays. The finale weekend will feature the Chefs @ ARTfest and the festival finale. In the past the festival has included approximately 70 or more individual events, 35 venues and countless individuals.

The Southern Shoalhaven is well known for it’s artistic richness – we are home to many working artists and even more art enthusiasts, across a broad spectrum of art forms – visual, musical, dramatic, literary, film and more. As an ARTfest venue you will be contributing to the wonderful culture of our area and helping to further this unique identity.

Most venues expect to put in a little extra effort at this time – absolutely worth it!

Once your event has been confirmed you will be provided with publicity materials, a venue sign to display during the festival and a general information package.

Festival Programs become available approximately one month before the festival begins. Each venue will be given a quantity of these.

The committee will support you with any questions you might have about preparing for your event as well as advice on how to make it as successful as possible.

Your own networking and promotion are vitally important. The most successful ones are those that actively promote their event to their customers and enthusiastically encourage people to attend. In other words you should be prepared to take ownership of your event – whilst the fee to be involved in the festival covers some of the costs of the program, website and general festival advertising, if every venue takes the time to “spread the word” about their individual event (and get excited about it) the marketing is so much more effective. Consider sending out  invitations & flyers, have a special ‘ARTfest’ offer or simply just tell people about it.

Finally, you can expect to be completely and satisfyingly exhausted at the end. Having taken your fill of art, literature, music, drama, dance, film and other variations of the creative, you will be allowed to rest until the next ARTfest comes around!

If you haven’t already, it is also worth looking at the festival website which grows daily as the festival approaches.  This has become a comprehensive record of the festival; calendar, artists, venues and so on. Direct customers, friends, family, etc to this website.

Here’s to a fabulous, creative, fun, exciting, happy and just a little crazy 10 days of arts!

The ARTfest Committee.