Rain Barrel Art Review Planning

Hi all!
This month has gone by very quickly. First I was out of town, then Thanksgiving. . . time has flown by. Mostly what I have been doing this month is a lot of planning for the Rain Barrel Art Review, culminating March 19th, 2010 with the first ever Barrel Roll (art walk), reception, live auction and kick off of the online auction on eBay (search for the non-profit Missouri River Communities Network and Rain Barrels). We sent out a call to artists to submit a design for a rain barrel in the suggested theme of "water conservation". By asking for a design, giving a theme and sending the request to the universities to distribute, I was hoping for many committed responses. (Last year, unfortunately, two artists took barrels but were unable to complete them.)

So far, it looks like we have the same number of responses as last year, even though I had several galleries promise to send out the call to hundreds of people on their mailing lists. If anyone has done this type of event before and has suggestions, please let me know. Also, if anyone is trying to plan one and wants to discuss, please leave a comment and we can share ideas!

We have been successful though in drumming up media. Today I'm being interviewed for the Columbia Missourian and next week will be taping Radio Friends with Paul Pepper on KBIA to air Dec. 14th at 8:50am and a different segment to air Jan 29th, same time.

I think since this is only the second year, we need time for people to get to know us and what this event is about. As an organization, we will continue to get more coverage and use advertising to help people become more aware of what we do.

Oh, I felt most accomplished the day before Thanksgiving. I spent the day making envelopes out of old conservation pamphlets that we had laying around. They were too old to hand out, and just taking up space, so I cut them to the right size and folded them up into unique, recycled envelopes. I'm using these to send our sponsor request letters to businesses. Hopefully they will see our commitment to the environment!