Say "Ann Arbor" in most places outside the city limits and the immediate response is "Go Blue!" Sundance has film, Austin has music and more with SXSW and the City Limits Music Festival, the Bay Area has the Maker Faire, Aspen has the Comedy Festival.
Ann Arbor has football as our signature event, culture-vulture yearnings to the contrary.
"It is true - what brings most people here on a most consistent basis is football. That goes along with being a college town. It brings in $80 million for eight home games a year. 60 percent (of people who attend) come from outside of Washtenaw County," says Mary A. Kerr, president of the Ann Arbor Area Convention and Visitors Bureau.
Sadly, Hash Bash and the Naked Mile compete with Tree Town athletics and arts events for regional and national attention. Thankfully, both are endangered or extinct. Plenty of other local festivals fill the calendar but none have taken the crown as
ArtPrize has done for Grand Rapids. After only one year, ArtPrize has established an indelible community identity for the city.
The
Ann Arbor Film Festival,
Ignite Ann Arbor,
FestiFools, and Ypsilanti's
Shadow Art Fair remain cult events with some name recognition, mostly local, but limited participation. Another is in the pipeline. Any of them may have "It" potential.
Some events are more free-form than others. Ignite Ann Arbor has few criteria beyond what sounds interesting to the review committee, which looks through proposals for five-minute talks on just about anything. A dozen or so presentations fill the evening. It's part of a world-wide Global Ignite network. Past topics have included the Golden Mean, foraging for a wild-food lunch, and making a camp stove out of a soda can - in addition to many tech talks. Ignite Ann Arbor 4 is set for 7pm on Oct. 12 at Blau Auditorium at the Ross School of Business (visit
igniteannarbor.com for the call for proposals).
"Ignite's been getting about 400 people. We try to keep it interesting and eclectic. It's important for getting people together who don't necessarily communicate with each other, exposure to ideas you might not be exposed to (normally)," says Ryan Burns, one of the event's organizers.
Where is our
SXSW? What does it take to create a super event inseparable from our city? If the art fairs can't do it, what can? What kind of festival, fair or happening could displace football as our signature event? For that matter, why isn't the art fair our signature event?
Y
eah, we know - it's "art fairs" -- a distinction at once too subtle and too broad for its visitors to grasp. Maybe that's why it isn't more prominent than football. Nobody who comes to the "art fairs" cares that there are four of them, butted up to each other in a giant visual arts and elephant ear frenzy. Territorialism may keep the quartet from becoming a single entity. Honestly, do we need four executive directors, four boards of directors, multiple juries? It's a branding nightmare, as well as senseless budget duplication.
The (Original) Ann Arbor Street Art Fair's new executive director, Maureen Riley, says the art fair conglomerate is the largest in the country in attendance and in the 1,100 artists hosted. She's still digesting the experience of her first fair as leader of "The Original" art fair. (The existence of the tag proves the branding conundrum.) She'll consider changes when processing is farther along. For now, she's happy with the variety of art and pricing available.
"When you get a half a million people, you're going to get half a million opinions on what art is. Anybody can find something that they like and can afford. That's true whether you're talking high end or low end," Riley says.
By marketing with social media this year, the art fairs hoped to attract a younger audience. But the intern responsible for the AASAF's Twitter and Facebook campaigns just left for New York. And young artists are declining to participate, choosing instead to sell online through web sites such as
etsy.com. New artists come from the ranks of aging boomers who have always wanted to try artistic pursuits and now have time thanks to retirement or lay-off. That will be one of Riley's challenges in coming years.
Robb Woulfe considers the
Ann Arbor Summer Festival one of the leading arts festivals in the US. Forgive his favoritism - he's executive director of the long-running performing arts program. "It's different than arts festivals in Europe, much more consumer-driven versus being absorbed in the experience, not going to a specific event. We're nowhere near as progressive as some of the overseas festivals," Woulfe says.
He's aiming for change - and not just because the economy has forced AASF and its board to take a hard look at programming. "People are looking for something new, not the same old-same old. Of course, there's comfort in knowing an artist or their work. But I want to be more adventuresome, learn from what the community responds to and move in that direction," he says.
"We're carving out our niche in a very saturated market. There's so much art, culture and entertainment product in this relatively small community. We have to establish a clear identity for Summer Festival."
Audiences can look forward to AASF experimenting with new venues, not planted in the Power Center, Woulfe says. He's just returned from an arts festival in Galway, Ireland that offered performances city-wide.
"Our event has the potential to turn this city into a festival city.
The Galway Arts Festival transforms the community and the town - it's different than the art fair landscape. Even little barbershops offered discounts for festival-goers who were in town," he reports.
Street theatre, an elaborate opening ceremony and tent concerts are ideas Woulfe would like to bring from Galway to Ann Arbor.
Tracking its audience through box office stats and Google Analytics, the Summer Festival has found its audience is 80-90 percent regional - mostly Ann Arbor and Ypsi, but many people come from Toledo and areas west of Ann Arbor.
Toledo is a large market for Ann Arbor, says Mary Kerr of the Visitors Bureau. "All of our festivals - especially the larger events - are great economic drivers, drawing people from areas within 50 miles. Rolling Sculpture has become a very large event. It's drawing people from a very specific interest area - the classic cars," Kerr says.
If an AASF performer is a big enough draw - such as Baryshnikov or A Prairie Home Companion - people will come from the Upper Peninsula, Woulfe says. But such acts can get expensive. He budgets $30K-$40K each year for regional artists, and $150K to $275K for main-stage artist fees. One marquee act can easily cost six figures. It's the breakout bands and fringe shows that really define the festival, he says.
"My biggest fear is that we get so comfortable and so predictable and flat - there's nothing worse. Who knows what will happen with my crazy tent idea? There's a problem if this festival looks the same in five years," Woulfe says.
The art fairs and Ann Arbor Summer Festival are events that might be found in other cities, and that's no reflection on what they do, says Donald Harrison, executive director of the
Ann Arbor Film Festival (AAFF). The annual March film event is storied and unique. It suffers from a lack of enthusiastic local support, however. Lots of Ann Arborites have heard of it but a select number of them actually attend. And the festival has yet to become a destination event for out-of-towners. With its 50th anniversary coming up in 2012, maybe AAFF can make a splash locally and on a larger stage.
"We show films outside the commercial mainstream yet draw an adventuresome mainstream audience. AAFF represents the cultural roots of Ann Arbor, built off the '60s. AAFF holds those values," Harrison says.
Dug Song is an Ann Arbor entrepreneur and founder of
A2Geeks, a non-profit technology community. He attended
Boco last fall in Boulder, Colorado. (Boco 2010 takes place on Oct. 8-9.) Song came back from the two-day food, music, and tech gathering with a new mission. He and friends had been brainstorming a similar local event. Now he's determined to organize such a conference, probably next year.
"When I saw that, I said as I say many times, I don't understand why we don't do it here. I think there's an under-served population of younger folks and folks who are young at heart looking for something other than the same art fair year in and year out," Song says.
"It's frustrating living in Michigan. We have a lot of great stuff here, particularly people, but it's hard to find the gems out there. We spend half the year hiding from winter. I want to break the mold and figure out how to establish events that are not the same people, the same things every time."
Like Boco, Song's conference-to-be would involve the whole community, including local businesses, coffee shops, and restaurants.
Ryan Burns is involved in the music-food-tech event along with Song, Al McWilliams of Quack, Jeff McCabe of Selma Café, and people from Ghostly Music, among others. He says an all-inclusive approach is desirable for a successful Ann Arbor signature event. Tapping those passions is what makes an event the united expression of a community. "Everyone can be a geek - it's not an age thing. It's a broad age distribution - lots of people are interested in lots of things," Burns says.
Total community involvement was the key to success for ArtPrize in Grand Rapids last year, says the program's executive director, Bill Holsinger-Robinson. Having a $250,000 first prize and a total $449,000 purse doesn't hurt, either, he adds. The top 10 entries receive prizes. Anyone can enter the international art competition. Anyone who attends may vote; the winner is determined by public vote. Any property in downtown Grand Rapids can host an entry of its choice. This year's ArtPrize viewing takes place from Sept. 22-Oct. 10.
"A lot of what we did last year was based upon one-on-one outreach, really -- and a lot of trying to stay out of the public's way and (let them) determine how they were going to participate," Holsinger-Robinson says. "After the event, we tried to figure out what the heck happened. It blew away even our three-year growth plans. It was three-to-five times what we anticipated. The scope was amazing."
Even though art was the focus of the event, the community played on the main stage, Holsinger-Robinson explains."We make everything as accessible to participate in as many ways as possible. By creating a really, really simple platform, we're igniting aspirations and imagination, encouraging risk-taking and entrepreneurship," he says.
It's a philosophy Ann Arbor might want to look to as it struggles to find an event that captures the imagination of audiences inside and outside our community.
Constance Crump creates a festival of words for Concentrate.
She's also an Ann Arbor writer whose work has
appeared in Crain's
Detroit Business, The Ann Arbor News, The Detroit Free Press, and Billboard Magazine. Her previous article was Ann Arbor's International Welcome Mat.
All photos by Doug Coombe
Photos:
Ann Arbor Street Art Fair by Nicario Jimenez
Nomo perform at Top of the Park
Maureen Riley at the Ann Arbor Street Art Fair office with Nicario Jimenez's work.
Robb Woulfe at the Ann Arbor Summer Festival office
Garrison Keillor with a Prairie Home Companion
Dug Song at the Ross School of Business
Sculpture at the Guild Ann Arbor Summer Art Fair