Exhibition in our community...

[PIXI_666]

Hi Everyone

I was wanting to hear your opinions and thoughts on setting up an exhibition.

My friend is a talented artist, and i have my photography, so we put our heads together and came up with doing our own little community exhibition in September this year. Rather than go at it alone we decided it would be a good idea to do this together.

We live in a country town, so our theme would be our town and surrounding area's, there is lots of bushland out there and we thought scenery, farming, flora & fauna (NATIVE) would be a good thing to start on. That's what our community is about, and a lot of people around here only like to see what is in front of their eyes!

So we are going to showcase our work in our local gallery...we were thinking a small wine and cheese night over 1 weekend. We want to have an open night on the Saturday and then maybe a small brunch thing on the Sunday.

We plan on getting a few sponsors from local businesses, and in result of that put their banners around, also on our advertising material put their logo's on there.

We will be inviting those businesses also by letters, then inviting maybe a guest speaker (Someone local and well known to open the night), then we are going to put up flyers around local businesses and advertise in our local paper's.

It may seem a while off, it is in September! But my friend needs a lot of time to get some paintings up to scratch, my job is quite easy compared to her haha so im thinking i might take most of the work load on?

Our aim is to get our name out there, not necessarily to sell our work (Even though that is something we will offer) and that would be total bonuses if we sold some of our work (Im sure our family and friends would be supportive there hahaha!)
BUT...it's to mainly like i said get our names out there in the community - i think it's the best way to start because our community is SMALL...and there's not much to offer people out here...

What does everyone think about our way of going about it? Is there anything else we should be thinking about? Any opinions towards having exhibitions etc.?

I only ask the best...that's why im asking you all :)

Del

[PhotosGuy]

Seems like it would be "worth a shot"! Are you planning it for a Holiday weekend? Maybe the local paper would give you some advanced coverage?

[PIXI_666]

Photosguy, yes it'll be a weekend thing but not holiday weekend, usually people get out of our town for long weekends etc. lol
Plus it's in September, so HERE in September generally cold, so we were thinking it might be a good time to get everyone into a nice warm gallery and coax them with wine, cheese, tea and coffee :) (Plus lots of heating!)

The local paper is a good option, except at my work we use the loal paper to advertise certain things, then we test ran that and after all the comments back from people, about 5% of them found out about our function through the paper.

It's also very expensive which is just STUPID (No wonder it's a ****ty paper lol) BUT...we were thinking of still putting it in there, just to get that 5%, except put it in the cheaper sections, they have a section there in the classifieds for people to look in...eg. raffle winners etc.

That's why we thought of getting some sponsors, so expenses like that are covered without us getting too much into our pockets :)

THANKS!!

Del

[PhotosGuy]

Sponsors are good if you can find them. Maybe they would have a Public Relations person or advertising manager that places ads in the paper & he could promote a story from the paper about the event?

[PIXI_666]

Actually a story might be good as an outcome, we were thinking about inviting the photojournalists to the event anyway and also some journo's from the 2 farming newspapers that are WA promoted, they are always looking for stories!! Would be a cheap way to get our name out there even more :)