Applying to Festival of the Arts— Tips for Performing Artists

Applying to Festival of the Arts— Tips for Performing Artists

By Bryan Mitschell, Performing Arts Director.

We are fortunate and honored to have so many great performers interested in showcasing their talents to audiences at our Festival of the Arts each year!  These performers come to us from the local community as well as outside of it.  They represent a wide variety of performance formats and artistic stylings.  Some are emerging artists we’re excited to give a platform to, some are seasoned professionals we’re honored want to contribute to our event. With so many performers to consider, our application process—informed by independent entertainment professionals in the community—helps us make equitable and inclusive decisions about which performers to invite each year and which we hope to include in future Festivals.  

Here are some tips I have for performers to make their applications as easy as possible for us to say “yes!” 

Guidelines and Requirements

If your performance set does not lend itself to the following guidelines, Festival of the Arts is probably not the right performance opportunity for you. 

• Stage performances must be family-friendly with no vulgarity, hate-speech, sexual suggestiveness or advocation of criminal activity. 

• To ensure a welcoming Festival environment for everyone, stage performances must not contain content with the primary purpose of promoting any specific religious worldview. 

• Our open application process is only for performers interested in performing from one of our performance stages. If you are interested in performing off stage elsewhere on Festival grounds, these performance opportunities are reserved for Art Moves Artists and are not application-based 

• Our maximum stage dimensions are 36 feet wide and 24 feet deep. If your performance requires more stage space than this, you should not apply. 

• We are able to offer honorariums to some of our stage performers at Festival of the Arts, but as being an event with no profit from admission costs or ticket sales, the spirit of performing at Festival is one of volunteerism and community engagement.  We understand not every performance group can justify investing their time and effort into an event that might not be able to match the fee rates they are used to charging, but we humbly ask for your understanding of our limitations. 

Does Scheduling Availability Affect Performer Selection? 

• Select every day and time you are genuinely available to perform. 

• Do not limit availability only to your most preferred performance times. 

• Greater availability gives Festival staff more opportunities to place your act within the schedule. 

• Also, when selecting what durations of performance time you are able to perform, choosing more will give Festival staff more opportunities to place your act within the schedule. 

Festival Audition Video Guidelines
 

• Submit your strongest one-minute performance sample. Out of fairness, only one minute of video will be used during jury and curatorial review, and if you don’t deliberately curate which minute of your video you want utilized, you leave it to chance what will be shown to jurors and curators. 

• Represent the act you intend to bring to Festival. Group size, genre and performance style should closely match the proposed Festival performance. 

• Focus on the performance. Avoid using significant video time for introductions, explanations or performer backstory.  It’s best if you let your performance sell itself! 

• Identifying information is allowed. Artist names, logos and graphic text may appear in the video. The Festival performer jury is not a blind review process and we encourage our jurors and curators to consider reputation, acknowledging that creating a reputation is part of the entertainment business. 

• Montages are permitted but discouraged. Applicants may combine clips of multiple performances when necessary to demonstrate a program’s variety, but longer uninterrupted passages tend to be received better by jurors and curators. 
   

What if I have more than one performance act that I’m a part of? 

Submit more than one application!  We encourage performers to submit as many applications as they like for different performance acts they have.  It is better to do this than to try representing multiple possible acts through one application. 

Don’t submit an incomplete application! 

• Be thorough and check to be sure every question is answered and your video file is uploaded. 

• ACOKC Staff will try to follow up with those who submit incomplete applications to remedy the situation before jury or curation processes begin, but we cannot guarantee inclusion for partial application. 

What If I Am Not Selected?

• Keep applying in future years. Performer selections and available opportunities change from year to year, as do jurors and curatorial needs. 

• Do not view non-selection as a judgment of your work. Many strong applicants cannot be accommodated because of limited performance timeslots. 

• Jury scores are not published, so don’t feel worried that your work will be publicly compared to your peers. 

• Community arts access programs are also encouraged to continue applying in future years.  Arts Council OKC works to provide equal opportunities for programs serving youth and other specialized subsets of the community, but available performance opportunities prevents every group from appearing each year. 

If you have questions, get in touch!

The Arts Council OKC team is here to lend assistance if you need any help or information to complete your application.  Don’t hesitate to reach out with questions. 

email: Bryan Mitschell

Thank you for your interest in contributing your performance talents to Festival of the Arts! We look forward to reviewing your application and we genuinely hope we can work together to feature your work, if not this year, then in the future.