Why you should be submitting your artwork to festivals
Portrait shot by blonde.shot
If you follow my instagram or twitter you will probably know that I am one of the artists featured in this summers LYT Festival in Leamington Spa which will be showcasing a one-off framed piece from my Japan in JPG set which I'm pretty chuffed about. It's not something I planned to do this year but when I saw the opportunity I went for it and I'm going to tell you why you should submit your artwork to festivals too.
What is Lyt Festival?
LYT Festival is an indie festival collaboration between Creative Leamington and local retailers & businesses to bring the creative community and small business together. LYT stands for Local Young Talent and the aim of the festival is to create an exhibition of this local young talent from Leamington, Coventry and Warwickshire throughout the month of May in shop windows, providing both foot traffic for the shops and interaction for the artists via QR codes from the windows linkind directly to the artists pages.
They even have an interactive map to help festival attendees explore the city and discover the various exhibits & businesses.
What was the submission process?
As you'll be able to see below they had a clear and easy submission process where interested artists could fill out a form if they fit the entry requirements. What I loved about this festival was that while it was not free (there was a cost for the selected artists) it was extremely inclusive of age as usually when you see a festival looking for young participants this stops at 25 max usually. They made a pointed decision to widen this definition to include those up to the age of 35 which gave them access to people like me who have just entered their 30's but are just starting on their artistic journey.
Why you should be submitting your artwork to festivals
There are a multitude of reasons to submit your artwork to festivals but to me the most important ones relate to your audience.
Unless you are lucky enough to have an exisiting following on social media, access to funding or are really loyal friends who are consistently raising your profile to bigger accounts you will want to expand your reach through opportunities like festivals which puts your artwork whatever it might be in front of an audience that's interested in it.
Additionally depending on the festival you'll get to meet and interact with other likeminded artists as well as make them aware of your work.
Sometimes you might not make it into the festival but the act of submitting your artwork gives you an opportunity to get feedback on what organisers are looking for until you are successful.
If you think there are any other important reasons I forgot in this section for why you should submit your artwork to festivals the comments are open.
I was very fortunate to make it into LYT festival this year and I truly hope those viewing my piece enjoy and that someone falls in love with it enough to purchase it.
If you'd like to get hold of it visit my shop to snap it up before someone else does.