This summer, the Arts and Business Alliance is proud to announce a new arts festival to our little Oregon city: Create!Eugene!
The festival is headed by AAD Master’s candidates, Brent Hanifl, with assistance from some other students in the AAD department.
Brent Hanifl has previously worked on a similar project in Santa Fe, New Mexico, called Santa Fe Creative Tourism. Eugene is known as one of the top cities for the arts in the United States, and this festival helps to put Eugene on the map as a cultural tourism destination. The event takes place through the entire month of August, and will feature over 180 arts workshops.
Incoming ELAN Public Relations Chair, Cat Bradley took the chance to talk to Brent about the project:
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Cat: How did you come up with the idea specifically for Create!Eugene?
Brent: Create!Eugene was created out of a chance meeting with Kari Westlund of Travel Lane Country. We met at a dinner event, and discussed the work I’ve done in the past in Santa Fe, and we decided that we could create the same kind of festival here.
Create!Eugene is based on the creative tourism model used in Europe for people to travel and have experiential hands-on workshop vacations. With the connection between Kari and I, the Arts and Business Alliance of Eugene applied to the Arts and Cultural Tourism grant with the Oregon Arts Commission to fund the festival. The grant was funded, and now we’re here. It’s a partnership between the ABAE, Travel Lane County, The City of Eugene, and the various artists involved.
So, how exactly did this come up?
The idea came from the work I’ve been doing from the city of Santa Fe for the last four years. Kari and I met and talked about what we did there, and we said, “If we do it there, Eugene offers so many workshops and there’s so much culture. Why don’t we do it here?”. We had the goal of 100 workshops and now we’re at 180.
What has it been like to partner with the Arts and Business Alliance of Eugene?
The ABAE is a great resource for artists to market and promote their workshops. Create!Eugene cohesively aligns with their programming and it felt like a great collaboration. The partnership we have is very natural, and working with the ABAE as an organization has been very fluid because we align so well.
How has your education with the AAD department supplemented your work with Create!Euegene?
The connections that were built in our program lead directly to the creation of Create!Eugene. I ended up at this dinner meeting through the program, and happened to meet the right people. Our program provides so much opportunity for networking, and we really took full stride in that way with Create!Eugene.
What advice would you have for other AAD students who want to either work with festivals or something similar to C!E
I guess it’s about building skills. Things like content management systems and website. The majority of marketing is online. It doesn’t matter if you have the money, it’s about content:” Info, stories, how to’s. It puts the power in your hands over traditional venues. It’s your power, you don’t have to ask permission. That’s why so many people are on Etsy: It’s in your hands. You can make it happen.
Know your value. Try not to give away things for free. It’s ok to make a living doing, facilitation, and administrating art.
Is there anything that you think our students or artists should really know?
I think as arts administrators, sole proprietorship, etc., you need to have entrepreneurial ideas about selling art or working. Although Create!Eugene is funded by a grant, we need to think about other forms of funding. I think that, for us, the big thing is about entrepreneurship. It’s about artists taking control and managing their work. They don’t have to be poor and starving. The artists I know who are making a living from their work, they market it. They manage it. They’re highly active and live their work. This is where administration comes in, and I think it’s important for those artists to know: We have the power to make it happen.
