The Salem Arts Festival announces an invitation for the community to participate in the festival’s 14th year, running June 3 through June 5, 2022. Over 8,000 people regularly attend the family-friendly festival, transforming downtown Salem, MA into an opportunity for the arts community to showcase a wide range of talents. The festival includes a gallery of juried artists’ work in Old Town Hall, outdoor stage venues for performance and dance, an artist and artisan street fair, a collaborative public arts project, and much more! Special thanks to this year’s returning title sponsors Salem Five and Peabody Essex Museum for their continued support.
“The Arts Festival was the first community event we were able to hold when COVID-19 restrictions began lifting last year, and it was absolutely wonderful, but it was definitely in an adjusted form,” said Kylie Sullivan, Executive Director of Salem Main Streets, co-organizer of the Salem Arts Festival. “We are so looking forward to bringing this special event back to full capacity in 2022.”
The Salem Arts Festival is especially pleased to announce that the festival, initially run as a project of Salem Main Streets, will continue to run in collaboration with the Creative Collective. Creative Collective LLC is a program with the mission of fostering the sustainability of the creative industries and supporting creative workforce development. John Andrews, founder of the Collective states, “The expansion of the event and overall celebration of arts and culture in Salem is so critically needed as we try and heal from the past and the creative community is still struggling to get back on its feet so we are excited to support and celebrate this critically important industry of creators.”
Applications for performers, street fair vendors, and the annual mural slam are now live at salemartsfestival.com, with deadlines in late March and early April. A juried gallery will be selected by an on-site review process again this year, to be held the weekend before the festival, May 27 through May 30. Artists interested in the gallery should complete an Intent to Apply online at salemartsfestival.com in order to receive the most up-to-date information about the gallery process.
For the 9th year, a community-built public art installation will be included as part of the festival, and the committee is currently in search of proposals from locally-based artists for this year’s project. The project will ideally provide opportunities to create community engagement leading up to the festival, engage with a relevant issue in the community through the lens of art, and provide a compelling visual connection with this year’s festival theme of Connection and Connectivity. The deadline for proposals is March 31st. More information is available at salemartsfestival.com/community-art-project.
The Salem Arts Festival is organized by Salem Main Streets, the Creative Collective and a collaboration of Salem organizations. This festival and many others are supported by tourism dollars, Destination Salem and the City of Salem. If you would like to support this dynamic annual cultural mainstay and economic driver, please contact Arielle Kaplan at arielle@creativecollectivema.com or visit salemartsfestival.com/2022-sponsor-opportunities
For more information about the Salem Arts Festival, please see www.salemartsfestival.com or contact Kylie Sullivan at kylie@salemmainstreets.org or (978)744-0004 (x115).
