The third annual ZAPP® Conference brought together artists and administrators in the arts festival field for two days of targeted art business and professional development programming. Featured below is audio from the 2011 Conference opening presentation, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner Tonight.
Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner Tonight?
The 2011 Conference opened with a presentation from multicultural communications strategist Salvador Acevedo. Acevedo’s passionate dialogue focused on cultural participation opportunities offered by the significant demographic changes occurring in the United States. Along with introducing the idea that our communities are beginning to look different from those of past generations, Acevedo encouraged attendees to think of ways arts organizations can successfully adapt to these demographic changes.
Acevedo suggests that art festivals and fairs are poised to provide an excellent platform from which to transition from an outreach model to an engagement model. Establishing a framework in which we recognize that we are changing as much as our potential audiences is increasingly important and could work particularly well for art fairs and festivals because of the social interaction they allow.