February Message From the Chair
Is everyone else wondering where February went? That was fast - and we're not complaining!!! One more month closer to Home County (136 days to be exact!). The Festival Organizing Committee is hard at work - vendors are registering, the park is being mapped and our lineup is close to being completed. It's such an exciting time.
The Board was busy this month with grant applications - this is a massive job and I'd like to thank our treasurer Paul Tomlinson and his team for all their hard work in this area. Now we wait and see if we are successful in getting these much needed financial injections. Home County representatives attended a community consultation call with other arts and cultures groups to review the proposed Strategic Plan for the city. It was a worthwhile process and it felt good to know that we are all on the same page and looking to the city for support in very similar ways.
Speaking of strategic planning, I wanted to give you an update on the status of the Home County plan. At the AGM in November, the Board committed to providing a plan with firm direction by the end of March 2023. After reflection and discussion, we've decided that it's important to have one more Festival cycle under our belts, recognizing that last year was a Covid rebound year. We will gather our knowledge and lessons learned from this summer and meet in early September to formulate our strategic plan for the coming years. We appreciate your patience with this. We have important decisions to make - and we want to ensure we are doing that with this most relevant information.
A key piece of Board business this month was finalizing our vendor categories for the year. We're excited to announce two new categories. The Young Creators category is for youth, up to the age of 21, to have a space to sell their work at the Festival. We will have space for 10 of these amazing entrepreneurs at the Festival (we have 3 already!). The next category is the Home County Marketplace. The Marketplace is a space for local businesses to display and sell their products or services to the Home County patrons. There will be 20 spaces in total in the Marketplace for this year's Festival - including the 10 existing Second Avenue vendor spaces.
Darin will be telling you about our Community Open stage at Western Fair Market so please make sure that you're subscribed to our social media handles so you don't miss any details! You can find us on Facebook and Instagram.