27 February 2013

Call for artists

This year, the 5th annual Sydenham Arts Festival will run for 16 days from Saturday June 29th 2013. The Sydenham Arts Festival, Artists Trail team are looking for people who want to be involved in this year's Artists Trail. They really want to have as many artists and places to show art in and around Sydenham and Forest Hill this year.

The Artists Trail will be held during the three weekends of the Festival: 29th/30th June, 6th/7th July and 13th/14th July. You can choose to exhibit for one, two or all three weekends, but note that the Wimbledon finals coincide with the second weekend (6th/7th July) and this might deter visitors, especially if Andy Murray reaches the final again! The last weekend (13th/14th July) coincides with the annual Horniman Museum Art exhibition.

The last few years’ experience shows that houses and studios showing more than 2 or 3 artists’ work attracted more visitors and created more of a buzz, so the Artists Trail team would urge you to be more inventive this year. If you have space to share with other artist friends please do so. If you would like the Trail team to match your home / studio with a "homeless" artist please let them know - there is space for this on the entry form.

The entry fee this year, which includes the cost of advertising and public liability insurance, has been increased to £40 per artist with a cap of £160 where there are more than 4 artists at the same venue. The increased entry fee will allow the Trail team to design something imaginative and appropriate to physically advertise each open house / studio and to attract more visitors to all the Artists Trail venues. They plan to print 12,000 Artists Trail broadsheets at the same time as the Festival brochure and to distribute them together. There will also be a website and they hope to take advantage of social media outlets such as Twitter to highlight Artists Trail activities.

The Festival brochures and Artists Trail broadsheets will be printed and ready for distribution early in May. In order to give them time to design the publicity material and to meet print deadlines they need to receive your completed entry form by Thursday, 7th March. You will then have until 18th March to pay and send the words and images for the broadsheet and website. Late entries will NOT be accepted.

If you are not an artist but would like to offer your home or studio as a venue for artists to show their work they would be very grateful. There is no entry fee for hosts.

If you wish to enter the 2013 Sydenham Arts Festival Artists Trail as an artist or a host, please fill in the online entry form. The Sydenham Arts Festival Artists Trail team (Alan Taylor Russell, Annabel McLaren, Anne-Marie Glasheen, Bruce Harrison, Mireille Galinou, Nick Haseltine, Pippa Stacey and Yoke Matze) would like to thank you for your continuing support of the Festival and the Artists Trail.

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