Several weeks ago I was visiting my hometown of Hoboken, NJ for the weekend. While there, someone mentioned that the Hoboken Arts and Music Festival would be taking place that very Sunday (September 29, 2009). I was thrilled to learn that purely by coincidence I would be able to attend one of my favorite semiannual hometown events.

Twice a year for the last 15 years, the city of Hoboken has been hosting day-long celebrations of local artists, craft workers, and performers. When I was still in school and living in Hoboken full time, my family, friends, and I tried to attend the festival each time it was put on. Being a spring and autumn event, however, made it very difficult to attend once I was out of the house and off to college.

After years of missing it, I had such a lovely experience walking up and down the main street of the town I grew up in, seeing all of the creative booths on display this year. There were over 300 artists involved in the festival, including: photographers, painters, musicians, theatre groups, pottery and metal-workers, dance companies, writers, and many more. There were also face painters and puppet shows for children, as well as three stages with continuous live music.

Maybe it was because I was seeing the festival with fresh eyes for the first time, but it gave me a real sense of belonging to something great, something bigger. This, in turn, got me thinking about the larger impact local arts-based events can have on a community. In a time of such economic hardship, it seems art and entertainment are some of the few things that get people out of the house and in a good mood. Local arts and crafts festivals can be a great way to stimulate both the local economy, and the local morale.

From a strictly financial perspective, hosting local festivals is extremely advantageous for any city or town. Right off the bat, the municipality, or local arts/culture organization as the case may be, gets to sell permits to each of the hundreds of vendors that plan to set up booths at the festival. Having an all-day event with entertainment and food motivates locals to get out of the house, making them more likely to patronize one of many local restaurants or bars in the vicinity of the festival. A large event such as this also attracts tourism. Even if it is just people from neighboring towns, they are suddenly spending their Sunday afternoon in your town, instead of their own.

Community arts festivals also encourage people to step out in support of their neighbors and local creators. City-life can often become just a day-to-day grind, but these events promote a real sense of community, local identity, and family-togetherness.

Currently, many people in the US are so frightened of unemployment, that they spend most of their time and energy working or thinking about work. Consequently, most people are not taking the time to seek out art galleries, check out new bands, or see local theatre productions. Street festivals are a wonderful way to make a large variety of artistic forms readily available and accessible to just about anyone.

Finally, I would like to take a moment to reflect on the benefits of community festivals to the artists themselves, the people who make events like these so colorful, exciting, and ultimately worth going to. There are not nearly enough avenues for small name creators to garner awareness and steady business for themselves. Neighborhood festivals, however, are an amazing way for artists to showcase their work in a highly publicized and highly attended event. It gives them the chance to interact with hundreds of audience members in just one afternoon, and also exposes them to other artists living right in their local area, promoting collaboration and further inspiration.

So after a fabulous afternoon of browsing, and a yummy lunch, I left my hometown’s Arts and Music Festival with the thought that I was extremely lucky to have grown up in an area that encourages and supports the arts. After considering how beneficial the event seemed to be for the community, I decided to do a quick internet search and see if there was any data to support my theories. Lo and behold…according to a report by the Craft Organization Directors Association (CODA), community festivals brought in $4.1 billion to US neighborhoods last spring alone!

And there you have it. Just as many Copyright Alliance bloggers have stated before me, the arts really are good for the economy, not to mention the heart and mind. Come next spring, I look forward to many more neighborhoods stimulating both their economy and their morale with arts festivals!

-Chelsea Lee Richardson

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This entry was posted on Friday, October 16th, 2009 at 9:25 am by Chelsea Richardson and is filed under creators, culture, economy, events. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.