This Could be the End of the Summer Arts Festival

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
We got the news. Well,I guess it broke Late Tuesday afternoon,
the Board of Directors of the OmahaSummer Arts Festival announced that they will be
ending this Omaha classic after this year'sfestival, which will be next weekend.
It is it is the fiftieth year, and I think for anybody that's been

(00:21):
around here for a while, thiscame as kind of a shock. It
was just one of the great signatureevents in our town every year and very
large, and all of a suddenno more after this year. Wanted to
chat with Vic Gutman, because Ithink Vicker's a godfay. He's a founder
of the Summer Arts Festival and joinsus from what may be a noisy airport
this morning. But that's okay,Vic, Good morning, Good morning,

(00:44):
Garry. How are you. I'mwell, good to have you back here.
What can you tell us about thisdecision and what the challenges were or
are so in the fiftieth year,this is going to be my last year
and having my company manage the festivalstarting to ramp down a little bit,

(01:07):
and so the board was faced witha number of decisions in terms of looking
for success in management, which theydid find and also being also having to
assess the potential of the board itselfraising the money that would be required to

(01:30):
put on the festival, and aboutfour hundred thousand dollars has to be raised
each year, and we've been ableto make it on the generosity of corporate
sponsors, foundations. Our very firstsupporter in the first year in nineteen seventy

(01:51):
five was the Nebraska Arts Council andthey still support us. So they really
had to look and say, isit feasible to continue raising that much money
and more as costs go up,And ultimately the board just felt, you
know, there's some signals out therethat some long time donors might be scaling

(02:17):
back on what they do to theart festival. And when the board looked
at a decision of continuing to moveahead but being very uncertain about fundraising and
the potential of having the cut programs, you know, which then would still

(02:40):
be the summer ar Accestival. Yeah, they ultimately made the decisions to make
this the last year and make ita great celebration. It sounds like a
lot of money to me, likeit's it's a three day festival and as
large, but also the vendors,the vendors pay to be here, do
they not? They do? Sowhat what what amounts to four hundred thousand

(03:05):
That seems like a very large numberto me to put on this festival?
Well, to put on this puton the festival, it's five hundred thousand
because we do have earned revenue.But when you're looking at a festival that
takes about three thousand hours of stafftime to manage. So it's a year

(03:28):
round process. You have all thefacilities costs, the security, the poor,
the party, the tents, thestage sound, you have all of
those costs. You have marketing costs, and then you also have programming costs
to do the children's fair, topay the performers on the stages. So

(03:57):
there's a lot of costs straight ofmarketing, programming costs to produce an events,
and a half million for an artsfestival is probably mostly about average in
the country. Okay, okay,let me let me ask you this.
I remember those are such great days. For many years the KFBAB was a
radio sponsor. We would do ourshows live from the festival, right and

(04:20):
that's when it was backed, that'swhen it was down on the Civic Center.
Basically we'd be on the plaza andthe vendors were set up up and
down Farnham. It was just wonderful. I'm trying to remember what was the
reason for moving from that location,Beck, Was it all the construction downtown
or what? No, Well,we moved from that location along the Civic

(04:43):
Center Hall of Justice. We actuallymoved to along the Mall, and that
was in two thousand and two.We had to move because of all the
construction in reimagining and purpose seeing themall, so we had to move.
We went to North downtown by theStadium. Then there was two years of

(05:12):
COVID and ultimately with all of theimprovements downtown, there just wasn't a place
to put a festival like ours,which goes nine blocks anywhere in downtown.
So we moved to a Sarbon villageand this will be our thirty year at
the Sarbon Village. I just haveone question, Vic, was it about

(05:38):
incapacity to generate the funds or alack of interest in doing it, because
it strikes me in a community likeOmaha that has been so supportive of the
arts, that quite honestly, fivehundred thousand dollars is not that much money,
especially if it's an average of mostart festivals around the country. So
was it about, hey, youknow, we just don't want to do
it anymore, or we couldn't getthe money. Well, we raised the

(06:02):
money for this year, and we'vealways operated in the black. What happened
is we were just getting some signalsfrom long time supporters and these have been
very generous donors and foundations, corporationsthat they're pulling back, that there's not

(06:24):
as much money for a free artsfestival as there used to be. So
there are some foundations that indicated theyare going to pull back, and also
even a major corporate sponsor that hasreally had to cut sponsorships over the last

(06:46):
couple of years. So there werejust signals that raising the four hundred thousand
was going to be a challenge,a huge challenge, and there was concern
that what if they can't get itraised. But they've made all these commitments,
so we've always operated very fiscally responsibly. And they said, well,

(07:14):
we could always cut the program,no performing arts, no neural tubes,
but that it wouldn't have been theSummer Arts Festival longer. Well understandable when
you put it that way, Iguess I'm cock eyed optimist. I'm still
hopeful that somebody will step up,because you're right, Rosie. For some
of these foundations, that's in thecushions of their accountant. Yeah no,

(07:35):
no, no, money's not aproblem. I got to run Beck.
Thank you so much. Bec Gutman, founder Summer Arts Festival. Here on
kfab's Morning News