Black Women’s Arts Festival Newsletter 4/28/10

The Black Women’s Arts Festival – an inclusive community event!

Newsletter April 28, 2010

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1) GREETINGS
2) CHAPBOOK POETRY CONTEST & OTHER UPDATES
3) CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS – THERE’S STILL TIME!
4) GOODSEARCH US!
5) DON’T CALL US – WE’LL CALL YOU (BUT WE LOVE YOU!)
6) DATES, PLACES & TIMES
7) VOLUNTEER SIGN-UP
8) MATCHING GIFTS ROCK!
9) FREE ADVERTISING IN THE BWAF PAGES ONLINE SUPPLEMENT!
10) FACEBOOK AND OTHER SOCIAL NETWORKING LINKS


CONTENTS OF TABLE

1) GREETINGS

Greetings, Friends!

Glad to be communicating with you once again. Welcome to another exciting edition of the newsletter of Philadelphia’s 7th annual Black Women’s Arts Festival. This event is, and always has been, welcoming of all respectful persons to attend and volunteer/organize.
Hope you’re feeling great these days – enjoying the warmer weather, and being as creative as you want to be! My name is Cassendre Xavier, and I’ll be your host for this edition :-)


2) CHAPBOOK POETRY CONTEST & OTHER UPDATES
Because of my workload organizing BWAF alone for the first time since 2003, I’m experiencing a little of the “Hmm-Maybe I Bit Off More Than I Can Chew” blues. That said, I’m putting all my efforts into the forthcoming festival alone, and have significantly slowed down certain other side projects. The Chapbook Poetry Contest still has three wonderful judges awaiting the next step. I imagine we will get this off the ground sometime soon after the festival, or after, if any of you wonderful literary types think you might enjoy organizing this project! We need folks who know about poetry contests and want to compile the submission guidelines, manage, and assist the judges. As soon as volunteer organizers of this project appear, it’s on! Same goes for the Themed Journal and Sideline Items projects. If any of you wish to spearhead either one, and collect a few folks to work on it with you, that’s great! If not, it’ll probably be about a year before I’ve assembled qualified interns to have at it. Again, my priority these days is organizing the next Festival, and working with a group of volunteers to make it a great experience for all of you! If you’d like to be considered to work on any of these, send your name, interest, email and phone number to: BWAFphilly@yahoo.com. You’ll be glad you did, ‘cause we’re good people and our projects are fun! And we’ll be glad to have you, ‘cause we’re pretty sure you’re cool, too! (P.S. All respectful persons are invited and encouraged to volunteer.)



3) CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS – THERE’S STILL TIME!
Did you want to apply to vend, do a workshop, or feature your performance/art at this year’s event? Well, there’s still time, M’Lady! Late submission applications are still available at our website (the specific link is http://bwaf2010submissions.eventbrite.com/ or http://tinyurl.com/ya8bv67). But act now – Offer ends soon! (Sorry. Couldn’t resist!)
[Offline version: To receive a paper submission form, please send a self-addressed, stamped envelope to: Black Women’s Arts Festival, Request for Submission Forms, 3721 Midvale Ave, Philadelphia, PA 19129-1743]


4) GOODSEARCH US!
Want to give us money just by using a search engine? We thought you would! That’s why we’ve registered ourselves at Goodsearch, which raises millions of dollars for deserving little upstarts like little ol’ us. Simply go to http://goodsearch.com, type “Black Women’s Arts Festival” as the charity you wish to donate to, and search away. Goodsearch will give us a wee bit o’ cash with each search, and after a year, those pennies do be addin’ up, yo! Thanks! (And very special thanks to Alyson Scott of Access Sports for the recommendation, and BWAF friend Eric Hammell for letting us know you can get the “Goodsearch” toolbar.)


5) DON’T CALL US – WE’LL CALL YOU (BUT WE LOVE YOU!)
Howdy folks. You know we love you, right? We do, we really, really do. And we totally need you! How silly would we look if there were only three of us at each Festival? Pretty darn silly. But all the love in the world can’t make us equipped to answer each of you who has submitted an application to feature. This is why we’ve put on the submission page under each genre’s application, that we are unable to confirm receipt of your submission, nor are we able to let you know before June whether you’ve been selected. Please trust we have received your application, mainly because our new electronic system (Thank you, Eventbrite!) keeps tabs of everything. We got it. And we’ll process it, and we’ll let you know if you’ve been selected. In June. Thank you so much, and if you’d like to change this system, then please recruit 15 or 20 reliable volunteers to run it for us :-)


6) DATES, PLACES & TIMES
This year’s Festival is scheduled for Thursday July 29th thru Sunday August 1st, 2010. Our primary venue will be The Rotunda, 4014 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104, as it has been every year since 2003. Stay tuned to find out what the other venues, and performance/workshop/vending schedule will be.
If you’d like to know more as things develop, and you don’t have regular access to email,
please send a SASE (self-addressed, stamped envelope) to: Black Women’s Arts Festival, Schedule Request, 3721 Midvale Ave, Philadelphia PA 19129-1743.

7) VOLUNTEER SIGN-UP
If you’re a person who is breathing and who likes the Black Women’s Arts Festival, and you are willing to donate some of your time to help organize or otherwise volunteer for this summer’s gala event, please send your name, email address, interest, and phone number to BWAFphilly@yahoo.com. We’ll be looking for anything from folks to set up before, clean up after, work the door as a bouncer (seriously!), offer rides to organizers/performers, or do online promotions, among other tasks.

8) MATCHING GIFTS ROCK!
We recently received a donation from one of our biggest supporters. She doubled her donation by using her employer’s matching gift program. If your employer, house of worship, or other community organization has such a program, please run and don’t walk to allow us to participate! As you can imagine, we could use every single dollar we receive and we can supply documentation to prove our 501(c)3 nonprofit status. You can send your check/money order payable to: Black Women’s Arts Festival, 3721 Midvale Ave, Philadelphia, PA 19129-1743 USA. If you’d like to use Paypal, or for more information, please email BWAFphilly@yahoo.com for further instructions.

9) FREE ADVERTISING IN THE BWAF PAGES ONLINE SUPPLEMENT!
The BWAF Pages - a Community Resource Directory & Coupon Book is a project in the works by the Black Women's Arts Festival www.BWAFpages.com. In the meantime, we’re sending out the occasional online version and offering free advertising to our community of friends. If you have news that would be of interest to BWAs, please send your free 75-word classifieds/listings to: BWAFpages@gmail.com. If your event is dated, please put the event date in the subject where we can see it right away, and the more in advance you send us news of dated events, the better. We may include your news in future online supplements of the BWAF Pages. BWAF Pages - Almost as Good as Word of Mouth!

10) FACEBOOK AND OTHER SOCIAL NETWORKING LINKS
Please take a moment to click on all our social networking links and befriend us. Also, if you’re a black woman artist, or an ally of BWAs, please network with us and with each other – befriend befriend, befriend!

NEW!! BWAF Facebook Fan Page (Don’t forget to login first): http://tinyurl.com/2dk4wst

Our official email list: http://tinyurl.com/2asxjzj

Our official blog: http://bwafphilly.blogspot.com/

We’re on MySpace, too: http://tinyurl.com/2c3mk8t

BWAF Facebook Profile (Log in first): http://tinyurl.com/26n9u9h

BWAF Facebook Group (Login first): http://tinyurl.com/2dl2pdk



You can always join our official email list by sending a blank email to: BWAFphilly-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

Thanks for everything and see you next time!

In art & community,

Cassendre Xavier
renaissance negresse (musician/author/visual artist/actress)
Founder & Executive Director
Black Women's Arts Festival (Est. 2003)
Now seeking artists & volunteers for the 7th Annual - July 29th - Aug 1st, 2010!

Contact / Donate:
Black Women's Arts Festival
3721 Midvale Ave
Philadelphia, PA 19129-1743
(215) 951-0330, x 2108 (Email much preferred.)
Email: BWAFphilly@yahoo.com
Website: www.BWAFphilly.org


© 2010 Black Women’s Arts FestivalÔ, BWAF, BWAF PhillyÔ. All rights reserved.

Source: http://bwafphilly.blogspot.com/2010/04/black-womens-arts-festival-newsletter.html or http://tinyurl.com/24akx3p.