Community of Festivals, Let's Talk!
Written by: Lu Barron
Linn County Supervisor Lu Barron, who also serves as a director on the Downtown District Board, wrote a guest column published in the Gazette on Friday, June 24, about running community festivals and events. The Downtown District stands ready to have the community conversation Supervisor Barron calls for in this column about how to make sure our Downtown Farmers’ Market and other community festivals are being run in the most effective and efficient way possible. Let’s talk!
It’s here!
My favorite time of the year. As the former executive director of the Freedom Festival, I still relish all aspects of the festival and consider it the region’s greatest community celebration. Dozens of activities over some three weeks of celebration culminate in a Fourth of July fireworks show capable of lifting a community's spirit and taking an individual's breath away.
While the Freedom Festival remains the signature event, it is far from our only community celebration. The Downtown Farmers' Market has grown into one of the largest outdoor festivals in the Midwest. We have parades for virtually every holiday. We have the BBQ Roundup and other events that are affiliated with the Freedom Festival but run by other organizations. We have an outdoor family movie series. We've also had great single-day events like last fall's Fireball Run that was run by staff from the Chamber and Convention and Visitors Bureau.
We are a community of festivals for all seasons, including the winter holiday festival called “Fire & Ice” which includes a downtown parade, chili cooking contest, fireworks, ice sculptures, carriage rides and lots of other activities that draw crowds regardless the temperature.
The growth and proliferation of events like these have been great for the community. But it also has led to an emerging question that I've heard more and more people asking: Are we doing festival and event management and operations in the most effective and efficient way possible?
Numerous local organizations now have skilled and experienced event planners on staff. Many of them work together on some of these events, sharing everything from equipment to knowledge.
Although the events themselves are unique, event management is not. Everyone deals with similar vendors, permits and logistics. Everyone deals with insurance, volunteer management and sponsorship recruitment. All events do similar promotional activity and have the same interactions with media.
I suspect many of them also deal with the same challenges. I know time management was always a struggle when I ran the Freedom Festival. At times there weren’t enough hours in a day to get done what needed to be done. But at other times of the year, it was slow, and we wished there was a way to bank the hours for the craziness we knew would be back soon.
Some other communities have leveraged the synergies among events by moving to a
“Festivals, Inc.” non-profit organization through which many community celebrations are managed. Done right, such an organization maintains the unique character of each individual celebration, but coordinates resources so all of them are run more efficiently and effectively.
I don’t know if that’s the right answer here. But it’s certainly the right conversation to have. Investors, board members and staff from all of our community celebrations should gather shortly after the Freedom Festival is over to take a close look at this.
If we can do it better, let’s get to it.