Arts Activities Support

The underlying story in this project is about the residents of this scenic river valley being woken up to the arts in their midst. In the end, 203 people experienced the Pop-up Performances at Marine Art Fair, 120 at Abnet Farm and 93 (rain) at Afton Art in the Park. One audience member was overheard telling another, "Hey, that's my neighbor" as she pointed out Brian Wicklund. The artistic goals of ArtReach’s mobile art gallery and the Pop-up Performances extend the goals of the organization. Below the stated goal is a description of how the goal was achieved. Highlighting the work of artists who live and work in the Saint Croix Valley. The Pop-up Performances highlighted the work of musicians from Marine on St Croix and Stillwater, Minnesota. Brian Wicklund's first performance of the series was at the Marine Art Fair which is also a fundraiser for the village's fire department and EMT department of which he is an active volunteer. Blue Hazard includes musicians from Marine, Stillwater and beyond three of these musicians were students of Wicklund's. The artist selection was deliberate and in the end, ArtReach was able to introduce these musicians to their neighbors and others in the region. Wicklund performs frequently out of the area and Blue Hazard is an emerging group. In this way, we felt as if our goal of connecting audiences to St Croix Valley artists was achieved. Sharing the confluence of arts and nature that give the region its unique identity. The Mobile Art Gallery and the Pop-up Performances are based on the notion of finding "artful ways to interact with the land" and of finding surprising and delightful ways to present art in unexpected places. During the fall art fairs residents and visitors to the St. Croix Valley explore the area through the arts. However, ArtReach works to extend this message by building content that works at the confluence of art and nature. Connecting visitors to a sense of place and residents to a sense of home through the arts. People's arts experience was deepened through the Pop-up Performances because of the multi-sensory Sunday morning event. You could smell the fair's coffee booth and kettle korn stand. You could hear contemporary bluegrass from the temporary venue and you could see the bright graffiti "STX" on the back of the Mobile Art Gallery beckoning you from across the art fair. The first weekend (two performances and Instrument Petting Zoo) were very smooth, very well-received and very exciting. The planning team was overwhelmed with emotion after the long months of building, planning, anticipating, etc. to see it come together like a dream. The musicians were uber professionals and the sound system was ideal for the setting. The majority of the audience was passing by rather than sitting to enjoy the full performance. On the beautiful sunny day people lingered longer, but on the drizzly day this definitely impacted the audience numbers and their experience of the music. In both instances, we decided we should have set the chairs up more like a cafe (with small groupings) rather than rows. This would allow people to pop up and down more easily and would be a little less intimidating. I think it would be easy to add an instrument petting zoo to the end of each performance in the future, but it would be good to find a way to make this inviting to adults too. Our community can be described as a part rural/ part 3rd or 4th ring suburban community, with a small and growing population of minorities. As the center of our geography, Stillwater is often the hub of our programs, but we hosted the Pop-up performances at a farm just north of Stillwater, in Marine on St Croix and in Afton. These art fairs are popular because they do not happen in the Twin Cities. ArtReach successfully reached our intended audience by planning and implementing the Pop-up Performances at the Valley's fall art fairs. In this way, we had a bit of a built in audience and we could rely on our art fair partners to amplify our marketing about the new Mobile Art Gallery. We also attracted music lovers to the art fairs at a time of the weekend when the art fairs are a little slower. Our Pop-up performances drew very small children, the elderly and everyone in between. We attracted a larger number of young adults than we had expected in part because of our selection of Blue Hazard. Bicyclists dismounted to stand along the edges of the crowd at Marine and artists left their booths to join the audience if they could. It is difficult to know if our outreach efforts resulted in attendance by lower income residents. We could have purchased a mailing list to specifically reach out to this portion of our rural and semi-rural area. We received a lot of great press about the Mobile Art Gallery, the Pop-up Performances and the Instrument Petting Zoo, in this way we met our goals for communicating to the broadest possible public about these free events. Other communication pieces included a postcard mailed to ArtReach's list and distributed to public places in the Valley. We also distributed an electronic version of the postcard and posted flyers on bulletin boards in the area. Facebook updates were used to spread the word from ArtReach, but also from Brian Wicklund and from Blue Hazard. A Facebook event was created and we boosted the reach of a post with a paid ad. Overall we received 6433 impressions with 8 posts, an average of 804 impressions per post. At the last minute, we also had an inexpensive opportunity to promote fall events in the City Pages. Since the Pop-up Performances were part of the region's fall art fair season many people happened upon the events. In this way, the Mobile Art Gallery's performances provided an unexpected experience in a unique setting.