Black Women’s Arts Festival Newsletter 1/21/10

Dear Friends,

The 7th annual Black Women’s Arts Festival (July 29th thru Aug 1st,2010) will be as special and thrilling as each year before it.
Some things that are being planned are in the works, and some have been completed. Some we’re making publicly known, and others are top secret.

Here are a few new updates:
1) The Rotunda will be our primary venue again. A wonderful community arts venue, the Rotunda was our sole venue in our early years and has remained a staple of BWAF events. I am thrilled to renew my connection with the Rotunda as the sole director of BWAF for only the 2nd time since 2003.
2) A very high percentage of the featured artists, workshop presenters, and vendors will be selected from the pool of those who processed their application online (via our official website http://BWAFphilly.org, click “Submissions”). Only a small amount will, or may be hand-picked without going through the submissions process.
3) Coming Soon: Chapbook Poetry Contest Guidelines! We haven’t heard from any non-black/non-female poetry judges to add to the diversity of our panel, and we don’t have the time nor the staff to recruit them, so we’re going to just continue working on the guidelines and reward information and will have them for you soon.

FAQs:
Here are some answers to questions which may or may not be clearly answered on our website and/or submissions page:

Q: Does BWAF pay or otherwise compensate its featured artists or workshop presenters?

A: No, the BWAF does not [have the funds to] pay featured artists or workshop presenters. At this time, the only informal compensation BWAF provides is online visibility of your name and hyperlink (For example: Monica McIntyre http://myspace.com/monicamcintyre) in our many online promotions (on Yahoo Groups, Blogger/Blogspot, MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter, among others). As time progresses, there may be more opportunities, such as free advertising via our print and online publications/websites, but that cannot be promised. Participating in BWAF as feature is an excellent opportunity to promote yourself to a new audience, and we are happy to assist you in that end, by printing your name and link as often as we can when appropriate. Being a BWAF feature also is a great way to network with other like-minded folks, and you are welcome to photograph or videotape yourself performing at BWAF and distribute or sell the footage as you wish. Someday, BWAF may be in a position to pay artists, but until such a time, it’s a wonderful, unforgettable, very special, non-paying gig.

Q: What type of artists is BWAF looking for/Or: How does BWAF select its artists?

A: A black female-identified individual (or a collective led by a black female-identified individual) artist (dancer, singer, filmmaker, etc.) who created the work(s). The featured act/workshop/vendor can be on any level of “accomplishment”. What is very important is a web presence. If you’re out in the world making art, you should at least have a MySpace page or free blog to link with and help us promote you to our networks. Another reason we want to work with people who have regular access to the internet is because 90% of our communications will (ideally) be via email. This is not only because that’s what works best for us right now, but also because email is a great way to maintain a mutually archived record of agreements between the artist and BWAF. Because we cannot compensate travel, gasoline, nor provide lodging for out of town artists, we are more likely to appeal to those who are local. However, if you are not Philadelphia-based, and you are in agreement with what we can offer, we’re happy to consider you. We are open to hearing from child-friendly acts as well as adult content, and will schedule you accordingly (we have some very exciting features and themes coming this summer)!
Overall, artists are selected by the quality of their content, their professionalism in communications, ability to either have and bring their following (even if their following is their students, neighbors, house-of-worship members and/or co-workers) and ABOVE ALL: THE ABILITY TO FOLLOW INSTRUCTIONS and READ THE FINE PRINT. Many of the questions we receive are already answered, but people aren’t taking the time to read them. This not only makes our job harder, but it opens the door wide open to applicants who do read the content and follow the instructions therein. Applicants who go to the website, click “Submissions”, read the instructions, follow them, then pay the nominal submission fee either online or via postal mail, submit their materials either electronically or by postal mail, and wait to hear from us are on the top of the list for serious consideration. Also, it makes us much more confident about, and willing to be, working with them in the case they are selected as a feature.
So, please, if you’d like to be a part of the Festival, go to www.BWAFphilly.org and click “Submissions”. Read everything, follow the instructions, and we’ll be very happy to hear from you!

Q: What if I want to apply but I don’t have regular access to the internet?

A: Send a SASE (self-addressed, stamped envelope) to:
Black Women’s Arts Festival
Request for Submissions Application
3721 Midvale Ave
Philadelphia, PA 19129-1743
You must have a telephone number, and public contact information to promote your work/business online. We will send you an application and instructions.

Q: What if I can’t pay the submission fee?

A: We regret that we have no staff to operate a scholarship or discount system at this time. Neither are we equipped with staff to organize and operate a barter/trade system. Therefore, the low submission fee is a mandatory part of the application process. If you can’t afford it this year, put BWAF 2011 on your wish list for next year and wo/manifest it into being. We support and hold a vision of your increased financial abundance until you are able!

Q: I applied online and paid the fee two months ago. When will I hear whether I was selected?

A: As it clearly states on the Submissions Application page, we will let you know in June 2010 if you are selected. If you are NOT selected, we will NOT notify you. Only those who are selected will be notified. Please, and this is very important, please do NOT call or email, and especially, do not Facebook message us to ask the status of your application. We will contact you in June if you are selected. (This “Don’t call us, we’ll call you” request is also stated on the Submissions page.) If we had 20 people on staff to contact all applicants, honestly, it still wouldn’t be a good use of time. We are extremely short staffed. There was a time when we did send emails to everyone who applied. We may be able to do that in June, but we don’t want to promise that. If you’d like to send your submission via USPS (United States Postal Service www.usps.com), we recommend using Delivery Confirmation (costs less than a dollar) which will provide a tracking number to ensure your package reached its destination. If you pay by mail, we also recommend the USPS money order, which also costs only $1.05 and is trackable/replaceable. Those are some ways to track your order. Of course if you submit online, there’s a record of everything. Again, we will do our best to notify everyone we can, but we can only promise at this time to notify the selected features before the end of June 2010.
I will soon be updating the Black Women's Arts Festival official website's FAQs page to reflect the information in his newsletter.
If you have any questions that haven’t been addressed here, please email them to: BWAFphilly@yahoo.com. Do not reply to this message directly, as it may be coming from Facebook or a non-BWAF-official email address. Use our official email address only, please. I look forward to your questions, because they will be added to, and help improve our FAQs page for future inquiries.

I think that covers everything.

Once again, please:

Do not message us on Facebook, MySpace, or any other site other than our official website www.BWAFphilly.org or email address BWAFphilly@yahoo.com.

Do not call or email us about the status of your submission.

We will notify only those who have been selected in June 2010.

We cannot pay selected featured artists or workshop presenters.

You must have a website, MySpace page, or blog to be given serious, priority consideration as a featured artist or workshop presenter. Applicants who do not have any web presence at all will still be considered, including those without an email address, but this severely limits the likelihood that BWAF will be in regular contact, as we primarily use email and keep phone use to the barest minimum only when absolutely necessary. Also, being that what we most can offer is web presence, it limits our ability to serve those who do not have any web presence at all.
So, if you’ve been making arts, crafts, dancing, making films, or creating in any way, or you’ve been like a young Lisa Price (Carol’s Daughter) making natural skin and hair products and selling them at church bake sales and flea markets, we do want to hear from you, but it’s best to go to www.myspace.com or www.blogspot.com and create yourself a free and easy website. You can take it one step further and buy a domain name for less than ten bucks a year (at www.godaddy.com), something like “BettysDownHomeBakery.com” and just link that domain name to a MySpace page or blog. Lots of people do that, and their “websites” created this way are not only very attractive and effective, easy to maintain, but they’re also FREE! (Check out www.wordpress.com for more free website building ideas).
Of course we also have in the past featured and will feature in the future, artists with a more polished press kit, if you will, and all who are interested and agree with what we are able to provide are welcome to apply and contact us.

On a personal note, please know that as an artist, I use many methods of self-promotion online, and I often include news of BWAF in my notices, as it is my life’s work and related to my work as a multi-media artist. This means I may be sending notices from lots of sources that are NOT the official BWAFphilly@yahoo.com email address. If you'd like to contact me about anything other than the BWAF, feel free to message me personally at cxmusic@gmail.com.

That’s all for now, folks. We look forward to updating you again in the near future.
Thanks again for your interest, and for staying in touch with us.

Make yourself a beautiful day!

In art and community,

Cassende Xavier
Founder & Executive Director of Philadelphia's 7th Annual Black Women's Arts Festival
http://BWAFphilly.org


Please refer to the Black Women's Arts Festival website www.BWAFphilly.org for any further inquiries.
Please reply only via email to BWAFphilly@yahoo.com. No phone calls or other communications, please.


© Copyright 2010 by Cassendre Xavier/Black Women’s Arts Festival. All rights reserved.