So with the 5 day forecast out today, ticket sales for the festival started to pick up. I had already been consulting Accuweather, Weather Underground and Weather Channel websites for the last couple days to see what the festival weather would be like.

Because it rained rather extensively last year, we really need good weather this year to maintain people’s faith in the event. Even if it does rain and the rain insurance helps defray the losses, if the weather is lovely next year and no one buys tickets because they have been disappointed two years in a row, there is nothing to help stave off losses. So far Thursday through Saturday looks beautiful. Sunday looks a little iffy so we are praying the weather system doesn’t speed up any.

Because Appel Farm’s residential arts and music summer camp starts 2 weeks after the festival ends, we will be rushing to clean up the grounds on Sunday. It won’t be too productive if it does rain or have thunderstorms that day. Though the worst thing to have happen is to have a rainy festival day and then a rainy clean up day. It sort of adds insult to injury. You are miserable the day of the event and then miserable cleaning it all up.

I am rather proud of the festival coordinator this year. Not only has she been good about planning the event, she has started dreaming about the festival and waking up in the middle of the night to make notes to remember things. I would be worried if this wasn’t happening to her. It would be a sign she didn’t really “get” the scope of what she was about to create.

In years past I would actually wake up in the middle of the night and call my office voice mail with notes for the next day. Unfortunately, since I didn’t have to actually get up and turn the light on, I would be in a half daze while I dictated notes over the phone and consequently had to replay the messages the next day to figure out what the heck I was mumbling.

Most of today was spent handling rather boring, picayune but necessary details of the festival. I stuffed all sorts of support information into volunteer packets so they would know how to do their jobs better. I moved tents and other equipment to staging areas so that the Saturday morning set up crew will have a straightforward job.

Tomorrow is the big shopping day. While we have someone to cater the volunteer and performer meals, there are quite a number of items that performers request that it would cost too much to have the caterer provide. Tomorrow we will be running to a food warehouse and grocery store to pick up cases of water, soda, beer, milk, breakfast foods, cookies, etc, etc, etc.

We actually had the road manager of one of our performers call today because she was concerned about how closely we were paying attention to the hospitality rider she provided. This is a valid concern because often festivals skimp on such details and treat the performers rather poorly. While we don’t go overboard to ingratiate ourselves to performers, we do pay attention to detail. We have actually had bands announce from the stage that they just had the best meal they had ever eaten at a festival.

We make sure we take care of performers because we are a small festival and there isn’t the prestige associated with playing here as there might be at other festivals where artists will put up with the poor treatment just for the exposure. Taking care of the performers helps us attract bigger and better artists in subsequent years because word gets around that we offer a good experience and people are more apt to say yes.

In any case, we had the woman who heads up the hospitality area call the road manager to discuss any concerns she might have. When our coordinator said she had received the hospitality rider two weeks ago and had been supplied with the shopping list I am going to use tomorrow and that the list specifically noted which items were for the artist’s personal use, the road manager was apparently really relieved.

To some degree it is puzzling to me that performers have such negative experiences in their travels. The type of treatment we offer is not difficult to implement. If it wasn’t for the praise we receive, I would generally assume we are sort of bumbling along at about average. I guess it is a matter of being in the habit of being attentive that makes it so easy to offer good service.

Festivals being fairly expensive to run, especially with the vagarities of weather, Appel Farm has had sponsors for a number of years. At one time it was a bank, but now it is Comcast Cable with Target Stores sponsoring the Children’s Village.

There are some who don’t like the fact we accept money from the evil cable behemoth. I have to say in dealing with them that this is a case where the parts are actually greater than the sum. The festival doesn’t get its money directly from the corporate offices but rather through the local offices. The corporate offices allocate a certain amount of money to the local regional offices to distribute as they see fit. The amount the festival recieves is closer to the amount a theatre or ballet might receive from a production sponsor than the amount stadiums receive for naming rights.

The local folks are really wonderful to work with. They very cooperative and not at all demanding for attention or special treatment. The biggest problem one might say we have with them is that after sponsoring us for 4 years, ironically there is no cable service to Appel Farm. The cable stops a mile down the road which has meant that the intern house and summer camp staff has had to rely on rabbit ears to get any reception.

In return for their money, Comcast gets to put some banners up, places a big bus on the grounds where they distribute literature, has a couple people running around in Nickeloden and Cartoon Network cartoon character costumes and use one of our buildings for a reception. They also get a block of tickets for the event which they use to invite government officials and other they want to woo to the festival. These folks also get to go to the reception they hold.

They order whatever tents, tables, chairs and linens they need from the same tent vendor we use so we take responsibility for pointing out where these things need to be placed when the delivery truck rolls up and that is the extent of our involvement with the technical details of their reception. (Though there are about 4-5 meetings in the winter to review the previous festival and to hammer these details out well in advance of the event.)

Once the festival is running, they are really pretty low key. We only have 2 people assigned to help Comcast the entire day. One makes sure they have all the tables and extension cords they need, the other helps them process the VIPs they invite to the reception. In some regard the reception is almost an added bonus for the Farm because the executive and development directors have the opportunity to do a little lobbying of state lawmakers about the arts funding situation.

Last year they even did a documentary on the festival and recorded mini-concert/Q&As with 6 musicians for their programming line up. This year they are coming back to get a few more shots for the documentary because the rain last year didn’t make for the best representation of the festival.

All in all the relationship has been fairly productive for all parties. There hasn’t been any pressure brought to bear in order to influence artist selection. Other than some star struck autograph seeking, no one has thrown their weight around to get special access to performers or uttered an arrogant “Do you know who I AM!” Some of this is due to the atmosphere of the festival and the fact that the people who are fans of our line up aren’t usually the type that use bullying to get what they seek. The rest is just because at least this particular segment of the corporation is staffed by nice people.

Talking about how the community supports Appel Farm got me to thinking about how Appel Farm’s Festival lends support to the community. I don’t necessarily mean in terms of gas and food purchased locally though that is certainly an aspect of the support. One aspects of the mission to support artists is manifested in the free admission craft artists are given to the craft fair.

What this means is that the festival doesn’t take a cut of the money they make, nor do they charge the crafters an admission or registration fee. The artists take home whatever money they make. The craft show is juried however to ensure diversity in the offerings. The offerings have to be original works. Work created from kits or people acting as vendors for other people’s work is not allowed. As one might imagine, even with these restrictions, there are always more people applying than there is room to accomodate. (Only slots for 60 vendors.)

The wares cover a wide range of disciplines. There is a sheep to shawl demonstration (shear the sheep, card the wool, weave the wool), ceramics, metal jewelry, hand made musical instruments from around the world, weavings, paintings and blown glass to name a few.

Appel Farm also has a partnership with the Perkins Center for the Arts (perkinscenter.org). They built a wood fired kiln on Appel Farm’s grounds and they use it to create ceramics in their classes and Appel Farm’s campers get to fire their creations in it over the summer. As part of a grant program, artists are chosen to participate in the creation of works in the kiln (which is actually only one of three wood kilns on the Mid-Atlantic seaboard). There will be an open exhibit in the Appel Farm art studio so their kiln work may be displayed. If they want to sell anything, they must have a separate display outside so that the other artists don’t feel they received preferential treatment.

It may not be making a huge or immediate change in the lives and fortunes of these artists, but the free exposure and the support they receive from the festival certainly facilitates the process a little.

One of the things that is great about the Appel Farm Festival is the support it receives from the various local governmental agencies. The county road department mows the sides of the road for the festival and allows us the use of the snow fencing (granted, they store it on our land.)

The sheriff’s and state police are always very generous with their personnel. They enjoy the event because it is non-alcohol and the genre of music isn’t conducive to rioting.

The next township over lets us borrow tower lights so people can see where they are going when they return to their cars at night. Our township allows us to borrow recycling bins so we don’t have to buy or store them. (Though we certainly do clean them.)

The only negative has been that the police in the boro next door usually end up ticketing attendees as they pass through town. Granted, they always strictly enforce the 25 mph limit, but when you have 12,000 people attending, there is likely to be a high number of people to ticket. This has really just been the police making this decision. The mayor has asked them to give a little leeway in the past and it hasn’t worked. Recently, the trade off has been that the county places a digital sign showing a driver’s speed next to the big red sign that says speeding is strictly enforced. There haven’t been complaints of the boro being a speed trap in the last few years now.

All this support is the type of thing that is supposed to happen between an arts organization and it’s community. Granted, it helps in some respects that the center is located in a rural environment where you can establish some nice relationships. On the other hand, the surrounding community has always been a bit more conservative than the employees, campers and visitors to the center. Over the last 40 years, there has been some whispering about what people assume is going on 2 miles down the road.

Very few people in the local community volunteer or attend events at the arts center. That is changing slowly now because we have started offering afterschool classes for kids and adults in recent years. The honest truth is that people 10-50 miles away know more about what goes on at the arts center than those that live within 5 miles.

This is not to imply that the people nearby are uncultured, bigotted hicks. It is just that their interests haven’t aligned with what the arts center has offered until recently. Some of that might be due to the fact that more people who work in Philladelphia are slowly creeping into the area. And some of the current group of 20 somethings were the beneficiaries of the center’s school outreach programs in their youth.

There is also a deep running loyalty and helpful ethic to the local population. One year I was stopped on the side of the road putting up signs for the festival and no less than 6 people stopped to ask if I was having car trouble in the 20 minutes I was there. Last year, with all the rain we had, right around the end of the festival, a couple farmers and their sons came riding up on their tractors and asked the executive director if we needed help pulling festival attendees out of the mud (Boy did we ever!)

Some people may not totally understand what the arts are all about and may not be comfortable with what the local gossip says it is all about, however, they do know what a person in need looks like. To some extent it may be a relief knowing how to react and participate so they do wholeheartedly.