Would be great if someone started web site listing all the shows in an area... not to find one to do but to see that there are XXX shows the week, month etc before and after the ones you are looking at to book.
Getting a little crazy when you do a show and find that there was one there every week so the people justifiably are art showed out!
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Many states have arts and crafts directories. You can look under the name of a town in the index. For example, I just received Wisconsin's yesterday, and saw that one small town has 3 in a year. The smaller independent shows are less likely to be on ZAPP. There are a few sites like Festival.net you could use too. That tends to cover smaller ones. I have not used it for the purpose you are describing, but don't see why you couldn't search by town.
The entire street show "industry" has formed a bubble, and by definition will eventually pop. In the meantime we all have to deal with regions having way too many shows, and each show generally oversubscribed with applicants, and show directors believing no increase in fees will ever bring a day of reckoning. This is the irrational momentum that drives all bubbles (think stocks) and the selective inattention that turns into "nobody saw it coming". The actual market for arts/crafts peaked some years, at least by my reckoning, and as one very experienced colleague recently observed: In times past, exhibiting artists at any given show were more often than not 80/20 winners to losers. Today, the ratio has flipped and so we have people like Dr. Lundgren asking the above question, signaling a problem, but the train has left the station and all we can do is wait for a crash.
I always use the advanced search on Zapplication. It can provide a lot of organized selected info
Does the "advanced search" list shows that were not already listed on ZAPP through the "participating" or "Apply to" pages?
The advanced search lets you search by area, show date, application deadline and make sit easy to find the shows that would best fit a person's agenda. Just go to the search box in participating events and click on advanced search and play around with it from there.
Very good idea.
I tend to check the various application sites ie. CAFE, ZAPP, JAS etc. however there are others as well as independent ones.
Don't count on the promoters to tell us. They figure it's not in their best interests, for us to know.
A recent show, I inquired of the promoter prior to the show, if there was another show at that location, within the last month at that location. I was told no. Later I found there was one, a week before, a couple of blocks away.
So not the same location, just 3 blocks different!!!!!