St. Anthony Park Arts Festival Mission
The Arts Festival is produced by the St Anthony Park Branch Library Association, and raises both awareness of, and funds for, programming at our local branch. The summer children's reading program is currently the main beneficiary, bringing in and encouraging young new readers.
Each year, the St. Anthony Park Branch Library Association authorizes a Director(s) and committee members to organize and run the festival. The St. Anthony Park Branch Library Association is the financial agent for the festival, and is a 501(c)(3).
As the event name implies, the focal point of our festival is art. We also want to celebrate our historic Carnegie library and involve children and our community in the celebration. Festival participants are:
Artists
Library supporters
Activity supporters
Musicians
Food vendors
Community organizations
As a rule, only artists and vendors who have paid a booth fee should be accepting money. Our goal is to have as much as possible of the artist and vendor fees (which are made possible by festival customers) flow into supporting the library. The organizers seek out sponsors to offset festival expenses, and volunteer all of their time so that more funds are available for library programming.
Art certainly isn't the only thing in the world to spend money on, and since our festival draws a large crowd there is often outside interest in putting a variety of other things on offer, including consumables like personal products and food products, services, charitable fund raisers, promotions and so on. These items are often of high quality or for noble causes. However, the wide world of commerce could overwhelm the festival. We have physical space limitations and have chosen to keep our benefit event centered on art and the community. In particular, we want to support the artists, whose booth fees make the event possible, by focusing the event on them.