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Columbia Festival of the Arts discontinued

The annual festival will not return after 17 years.

Published Sept. 4, 2009

After 17 years, Columbia's Festival of the Arts, organized by the Office of Cultural Affairs, is being discontinued. The event, which formerly occurred in downtown Columbia on the last full weekend of September, was created to assist local artists and raise awareness about OCA. Declining participation, lack of funds and several other issues ultimately led to the decision to discontinue the festival.

"Events have their life cycles," said Marie Hunter, manager of the Office of Cultural Affairs. "Back then there was an obvious purpose for having the festival — it was a great way to raise public awareness of the arts and the fact that the OCA had been established."

Since its inception in 1992, the Office of Cultural Affairs has become established in the community and has undertaken many new projects, such as its Percent for Art program, which helps to provide funds to support local artists.

Managing these new projects and events, as well as the Festival of the Arts, became unrealistic for the OCA, which on average employs 2.75 people.

"Staff was responsible for finding funding for the event and organizing it," Hunter said.

The festival alone consumed a large amount of time, taking away from time that could be spent on the OCA's other projects.

"It took one staff person nine months to put together the festival," Hunter said.

The festival was no longer serving the purpose of the OCA, yet another reason for its cancellation.

"Our mission is to support the arts in Columbia," Hunter said.

The festival was interfering with that mission, as raising funds for the event required obtaining money from the art organizations that support local artists.

"The festival was in direct competition with the groups we were trying to serve," Hunter said.

The main reason for the discontinuation of the festival was the lack of participation in recent years.

"We had declining participation in visual and performing artists," Hunter said, "And our event was not the only one that weekend."

According to the OCA Web site, as many as 13 other events were planned to occur on the same weekend as the Festival Of the Arts.

Festival organizers stepped up advertisement for the event as it competed with a number of events of similar genre. Before last year's festival, OCA realized the Festival of the Arts had run its course. The Commission on Cultural Affairs decided to end the annual event.

Professor Bede Clarke attended the festival with his students years ago.

"There seemed to be a fair amount of interest with the public," Clarke said.

Emeritus professor Brooke Cameron who, with students from MU, had a booth at the Festival of the Arts, recalls the high attendance of the event.

"We put out a table and hundreds of people would walk by," she said.

Clarke and his students brought a pottery wheel, demonstrated how to throw pots and entertained questions. "We set up a booth and did raku firing," Clarke said.

Children then had the opportunity to paint the Japanese-style pots that had just been thrown and fired in front of them.

"It was a nice way to get awareness for the arts in a community known for the arts," Cameron said. "The goal was to get people to ask 'Oh, what is that?' and 'How do you make that?'"

Along with demonstrations and hands-on activities, both Clarke and Cameron's students took the opportunity to fundraise.

"They would use the money to travel to conferences and bring in artists," Clarke said.

"I thought it was a fall thing that would go on forever," Clarke said.

The discontinuation of the Festival of the Arts, once a one-of-a-kind event in Columbia, will create opportunities for new events and art-focused projects in Columbia, but the festival will be missed.