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Art, Fun and Perfect Weather Attract Big Crowds to Columbus Arts Festival
More than 400,000 Columbus residents and visitors discovered the art at the 2009 Columbus Arts Festival presented by Time Warner Cable.
Beautiful weather, artwork from around the globe, gourmet fare and lots of great local bands attracted visitors to explore the Festival June 5-7 as it celebrated its second year in downtown's Discovery District.
And this year, visitors experienced the Columbus Arts Festival online, too. Through the Festival's Facebook page, currently at over 1,200 fans, and Twitter accounts, visitors shared their thoughts about the event:
"We absolutely love the new location. It had a really nice neighborhood feel to it—and we can walk to it! It makes sense to have the 'art fest' in the museum district."
"There were lots of great spaces at the Festival this year, I liked the way things were set up. Lots of intimate places, a few shady ones as well. I think that this is a great location, good dynamics in place."
"I enjoyed the festival a great deal this year...the kids part was great!"
"Love, love, loved it. Super fun."
"I had a really great time! Spent my birthday evening there, and came home with some fantastic artwork and beautiful photos that I took while I was there!"
In addition to gathering comments through our social media outlets, we did some research this year to offer some fun facts about the Columbus Arts Festival.
Did you know that...
- More than four miles of electrical wire is used to bring power to the Columbus Arts Festival.
- According to AmericanStyle magazine, the Columbus Arts Festival is one of the "Must See" festivals in the country!
- The Columbus Arts Festival recruits up to 450 volunteers each year to run the show behind the scenes, working in the information tents, as booth sitters for artists, helping to run the stages and in the hands-on art activities area and much more.
- Of those 450 volunteers, approximately 50 work year-round on the event as part of the Coordinating Committee.A few of our Coordinating Committee members have served as Festival volunteers for more than 20 years!
- For the 2009 Festival, approximately 230 artists from 31 states and from as far away as Tel-Aviv, Israel showed work in 15 different mediums ranging from finely crafted gemstone rings to nine-foot tall sculptures made entirely of nails.
- The Greater Columbus Arts Council has been the producer for the Columbus Arts Festival for over 35 years.
- 2011 is the 50th anniversary of this community event.
- We used 55 recycle bins on site and filled a 30-yard dumpster just with cardboard. Last year, we recycled 0.81 tons of plastic.
Thanks to our sponsors—Time Warner Cable, alive!, AEP, Motorists Insurance Group, Giant Eagle, Salon Schools Group, Shocktop, Yellowtail, Design Communications, WOSU, CD101, WMNI, The Westin Columbus, Dr. Pepper/Snapple Group and Ohio Magazine—for helping to make this year's Festival a success!
The 2010 Columbus Arts Festival will take place June 4-6. For more information, go to gcac.org/fest.
Photo by Greg Bartram. Festival artist, Doug Odom from Headland, AL, discusses his 2-dimensional mixed media work with Mayor Michael B. Coleman.