Arts festival promotes culture, draws visitors
Arts & The Park wrapped up its thirdstraight year of celebrating the arts in the Spa City on Sunday.
The Hot Springs Cultural Alliance festival, which began April 28, hosted over 60 events in a 10-day span, including art workshops and exhibits of all kinds.
Mary Neilson, executive director of Arts & The Park, said she was pleased with the wide variety of art that this year’s festival had to offer. She also said that 2017 was a year of expanding the creative vision of the festival.
“We had some interesting new workshops this year,” Neilson said.
This year, Arts & The Park explored topics that might not necessarily be placed under the heading of “art.” Along with common “artistic” mediums such as music and visual arts, the festival also explored areas such as storytelling and culinary arts. Events that highlighted these concepts were the Writers Critique Circle at the Garland County Library and The Art Of The Roast at Red Light Roastery.
This year’s guest artist was Little Rock’s Kevin Kresse, who created and displayed his work in the Mountain Valley Spring Water building. Kresse specializes in both sculptures and sketches — both of which he demonstrated for festival goers.
“He did a live sculpture. He also did a drawing workshop yesterday — a fivehour drawing workshop,” Neilson told The Sentinel-Record Saturday.
Overall, the festival used 22 venues in and around downtown Hot Springs to display and exemplify art, including the city’s monthly Gallery Walk featuring the area’s art galleries. Neilson said that the number of venues within the festival was an intentional decision to show off Hot Springs’ heritage.
“We live in a beautiful city,” she said.
“We have a rich history, and we want to celebrate that history and bring people to Hot Springs.”
Another intentional decision that the planners made was scheduling the festival in between the end of racing season and the beginning of the summer tourism season. Neilson said that the planners aim to give people outside of Hot Springs a reason to visit the city in between the two popular visiting times.
“You’re after the derby, you’re before tourist season starts, so we put our arts festival here to build tourism for Hot Springs during this early part of May,” Neilson said.
The festival ended with Art Springs Outdoor Festival, which took place in Hill Wheatley Plaza on Saturday and Sunday. Art Springs was a festival within Arts & The Park that featured live jazz, visual artists displaying their work and theatrical productions.
As far as the numbers for Art Springs were concerned, Neilson said that as of noon Saturday, the mini festival’s attendance was looking to exceed that of 2016. She said that attendance had already clicked 800 guests into Art Springs within the first two hours, which was on pace to surpass last year’s total of around 3,000.
Neilson said that Art Springs’ numbers are reflective of the entire festival.
“That’s just for this event,” Neilson said of Art Springs. “I’ll be collecting the sign-in sheets from the studios. We were up on our numbers from last year on that, as well.”
Neilson said that she would like to expand Art Springs by growing the amount of artists that the festival hosts in the coming years. She said that the mini festival had 30 artists showing their work this year, and that a higher number might allow for the planners to expand the Art
Springs’ area.
“It’d be great if we would be able to grow that and make it even larger and go down toward the farmers market, and just have more,” Neilson said.
As for the entire festival, Neilson said that she would like to promote the festival in such a way that would make Hot Springs a travel destination for the entire time the festival is held. She said that Arts & The Park experienced success in this area in 2017, as people traveled from out of state to attend the workshops. She said that this year, the festival was promoted to destinations within a 250-mile radius of Hot Springs.
Overall, Neilson said that her festival’s theme is a great way to bring dollars into the Spa City.
“People who come to a destination for “cultural tourism” — arts, etc. — stay longer and spend more money,” Neilson said. “That’s a great way to round out the tourism dollars for Hot Springs.”