OKLAHOMA CITY — The streets are already closing, tents are going up, and Oklahoma City is buzzing with anticipation for one of its longest-running Springtime institutions as Arts Council OKC’s Festival of the Arts prepares to launch its 58th year.
For four days from April 25th through the 28th, Downtown’s Bicentennial Park will become a dense, bustling hub of celebration for arts and creativity in all their forms with over 150 showcasing visual artists and nearly 100 live performances of music, dance, and more.
But this year, visitors and festival-goers can expect a few upgrades, a few improvements to the experience, and one major change as the festival moves for the first time to a four-day schedule, down from its long-established six days.
Arts Council organizers hope the result to be a significant streamlining of the beloved festival, both for visitors and for the artists themselves.
“We’re really just taking in and hearing the voices of the artists to do what’s best to continue being a top-tier festival,” said Arts Council OKC’s Seth Lewis, director of Festival of the Arts. “We’re currently ranked Top 25 in the nation, but we want to be Top 10 or even higher.”
Shorter festival
Chief among the Arts Council’s efforts to raise the standing and profile of OKC’s Festival of the Arts is the decision to shorten the fest’s schedule from six full days to just four.
The decision, Lewis told Free Press, was made primarily to ease the burden and stress placed on the artists themselves by a six-day schedule, in particular, the many traveling artists that come in from across the country and the world to show and sell their creations at the festival.
“We were the only festival in the nation that was six days long, and that was really discouraging a lot of artists from participating,” Lewis said. “Especially the number of traveling artists that have to drive. They just couldn’t bear the six days in OKC when, in a lot of cases, they’re coming straight from another festival and then packing up and driving and staying here.”
The change to a shorter, more manageable four-day schedule has already seen major results in that respect.
“The number of first-time artists in the festival this year is incredible,” Lewis said. “We’ve got new artists coming from Arizona, Pennsylvania, New York, Louisiana. Just all over. We had over 200 applicants this year from artists that have never been a part of our show.”
Expanded experience
The reduced number of days isn’t the only major change debuting at the festival this year, though.
The event’s one-day Youth Art Sale – with artists under the age of 18 showcasing and selling their work each year on the Saturday of the festival – has been significantly increased, doubling the number of child and teen artists in attendance to more than 30.
Also new this year is a creative incorporation of Arts Council’s ongoing Art Moves program that places artists of all styles in performances in often unexpected places around OKC.
During this year’s festival, visitors can expect to see Art Moves presentations popping up all over the festival grounds, expanding the performing arts beyond the confines of the stages for the first time.
“It’s a really cool way to get more performance artists engaged throughout the grounds,” Lewis said. “You might see a jazz musician playing on the steps of Civic Center, or you’ll see a chalk artist in the middle of day doing a mural on the ground, or you might see a performing magician just in the middle of the crowds doing magic tricks for everyone.”
Streamlined buying
The commerce side of the festival has also been tweaked in a way that’s likely to bring major improvement to the experience of purchasing artworks from the showcasing artists.
“Rather than having to get a slip from an artist and then wait in line at the purchase tent, we’ve moved this year to every artist having their own cashless terminal,” Lewis explained. “So when you see a piece of art in an artist’s booth, you can literally just buy it right there with them.”
Lewis reassured that cash payers will be able to use any of five cash terminals around the festival grounds to quickly get a prepaid card that will work at any artist terminal.
“It just makes it more efficient for everyone,” he said.
‘A mini city’
Efficiency is surely top of mind when organizing and managing a festival of this size with a truly staggering number of anticipated visitors and sales.
“We’re expecting up to 550,000 people, and we tend to average about $1.8 million in art sales each year,” Lewis said. “From the reactions we’ve been seeing, we’re expecting a really strong weekend.”
Of course, creating a space and an event that can handle that many visitors is no easy feat, with Arts Council staff and volunteers working for more than a week to get the Bicentennial Park area festival-ready.
“Even with the shortened four-day schedule, it still takes the same amount of time to build the grounds, production-wise,” said Lewis. “We’re adding electricity, plumbing, and striking up tents all from the ground up. We’re basically building a mini city right here in the middle of Downtown.”
Arts Council OKC’s 58th annual Festival of the Arts runs April 25th through April 28th in Downtown’s Bicentennial Park.
For more information, including a full list of showcasing artists and a lineup and schedule of performances, visit artscouncilokc.com.
Brett Fieldcamp has been covering arts, entertainment, news, housing, and culture in Oklahoma for nearly 15 years, writing for several local and state publications. He’s also a musician and songwriter and holds a certification as Specialist of Spirits from The Society of Wine Educators.
