
Cornwall, ON – Your Arts Council, Cornwall & the Counties (YAC), in partnership with the 24^th Annual Apples & Art Studio Tour, have acquired a 10 x 20 booth in the United Counties tent at the International Plowing Match. YAC states they are honoured to have been asked to provide whatever visual and performance art resources they can during the five-day event, which takes place from 8:30 am to 5 pm each day from September 22^nd through to September 26^th.
Richard Salem, YAC’s Facilitator, explained the opportunity. “We have three main areas to our participation in this incredible event: There’s our booth, which we’re sharing with Apples & Art; the rest of the United Counties tent that houses our booth, which we’re peppering with art; and an informal staged area for performances. If you’re a visual artist in SD&G and want to display a few of your creative works, we’ll have portions of our booth and areas in the rest of the tent set up for visual art displays. If you’re an SD&G performance artist or troupe with an act suitable for an informal lounge setting, we plan to provide a few hours a day of scheduled entertainment. We’d also like to have wandering performers doing interactive small-group performance in the rest of the tent. The IPM organizers are expecting 75,000 visitors over the 5 day event, so it’s a really incredible opportunity to put our collective creative resources in front of a massive and international crowd.”
Mr. Salem went on to elaborate YAC’s plans. “We’ll have space in our booth for brochures, business cards, and flyers for any artists, art organizations, art events, and art-related businesses who want their promotional material displayed. We’ll have a digital display as well where we can run promotional video or powerpoint-like web and marketing material. We won’t be allowed to sell any art, but we can certainly provide the info needed to buy it outside of the IPM event. There will be limited space and it’ll be awarded on a first-come, first-served basis, so get your materials in to the YAC office as soon as possible or you may not make it into the booth. If you have any ideas for mounting an interactive visual art event, please tell us and we’ll try to make it happen.”
Mr. Salem continued: ”We need performers too. If you’re a musician, dancer, poet, storyteller, magician, juggler – a performer of any ilk or discipline – we’ll pay you for a few hours of your time. Time slots are limited (a few hours a day), so once again, it’ll be first-come, first-served. The performers may need to audition for a board approval committee, so the sooner you let us know you’re interested, the better your chances of getting a slot. So Come One, Come All! Together we can show the world the rich and vibrant artistic tapestry that helps make SD&G such a fantastic place to live and visit.”