Organizers pronounced the First Annual Sunshine Coast Art Crawl a huge success, with some galleries seeing as many as 250 visitors through in a single weekend. The ‘hub/bead’ concept was very popular, with some visitors coming from Powell River just to collect the four additional beads for their crawl bracelets from the hubs of Madeira Park, Sechelt, Roberts Creek and Gibsons. A smashingly good idea, well executed. As usual, the peerless Roger Handling of Terra Firma Design produced the posters and brochures, which became instant keepsakes of the weekend.
One of my friends was out from dawn til dusk both days, and only managed to get to 17 of the 74 locations, and wished it went all week. What do you think? Comment on the post below and we’ll share your feedback with the wonderful organizers and volunteers.
Sunshine Coast BC artists were centre stage October 23rd and 24th for the first ever Sunshine Coast Arts Crawl, modeled after successful arts crawls in the Lower Mainland and Vancouver Island. There are 74 (seventy-four!!) galleries, stores and art studios participating, from Langdale to Lund.
Many people (me included) are intimidated by going into studios in particular. The Art Crawl offered a dedicated-to-the-experience couple of days designed to remove the hesitation around going into a studio – especially when it’s a part of a home or residential property – and gave everyone the opportunity to get over the shyness. Guests to studios often feel a self-imposed pressure to have to buy something from the artist, and it just ain’t so in terms of the artist’s expectations for the most part.
Artists work in the realm of communication, so getting to meet real people and interact around the idea of art is always a good use of their time. They also know that even if you don’t ‘click’ with their work, if you have an interesting and relaxing experience visiting the studio, you are likely to give a positive recommendation to others – who may become purchasers of the art in the future. Artists who don’t like interacting in a one-on-one way generally don’t participate in the Purple Banner program (purple banners are hung outside studios that are open for tours when the banner is flying).
The Sunshine Coast region has one of the highest per-capita ratios of people deriving all or a significant portion of their income from the arts. Come on out and tour this vital part of our cultural landscape and support them and the whole idea of art-as-cultural-activity by participating in this inaugural Art Crawl – watch for next year’s dates!
If you enjoyed this blog post, subscribe below, and you'll receive an automatic email update when we publish new content.