May was the month for our (a small group of Fiber Artists – mostly from our Weaving Guild) inaugural Fiber Festival. Over a year in the planning and perceived to be a replacement in our region for the now significantly changed Townsend event. I had put my name down to be Vendor Chair (after the years I had done this for the Smokey Mountain Fiber Arts Festival) and we also had several other ‘veterans’ on the board.
Initially we did not think we would have a lot of interest from vendors, but we chose the weekend to not clash too badly with any rival festivals. The Maryland Sheep and Wool was on, but that’s way out of our ‘local’ league. We also had to consider Instructors to run interesting courses as the whole package needed to be attractive to the public who we needed to turn up in their hundreds it was all to work.
Our venue was the Birchwood Community Center (where we hold our monthly guild meetings. We know the folk who manage the place and they were super supportive in our planning and as a bonus they would supply all day food from the (ex-school) cafeteria. It is how they make their little bit of profit for their group. They also hold the Sandhill Crane Festival in January each year a very well attended Festival that has been running for many years
Through lots of planning meetings we agreed on strategies to promote and attract Vendors, Instructors, and the public. This included social media (www.birchwoodfiberfestival.com primarily), mail-outs to guilds and fiber related shops, setting up demonstrations at other fesitvals, TV appearances, and as much ‘sharing’ as we could encourage. Things came together slowly and we ended up with a completely full vendor hall, a good variety of courses on offer and quite a bit of interest gathered from our various appearances.
For the actual festival we started the set up on the Thursday, had Vendors arrive to set up on the Friday and much setting up of classrooms based on what the actual lessons would be. The vendor hall (my part of ship) was the gymnasium which meant a relative easy job setting out the spaces. We had decided that we wanted to have at least 8 foot aisles which allow better two way traffic and hence a traffic flow that goes up and back rather than just a quick one way look around.
The photo’s from top left, clockwise are: the gymnasium (tape marks on floor for vendor spaces), vendor spaces filling on Friday, the next three are the Festival about to open on Saturday morning.
We had good crowds on Saturday and less on Sunday, but a lot of people went out the door with shopping bags which apparently was enough for all but two of our vendors saying they want to come back for 2024. Anne I did well with our towels and Para-tassels and will actually have a booth for 2024, so I had better get going on some stock!