Where in the world am I today?: Vacationing in Peru
Last week I talked about Pacific Contact… This week I offer a similar-ish resource for performers in British Columbia or who would like to tour in schools in British Columbia. What Pacific Contact is for Performing Arts Centers, Artstarts is for touring schools in the province. Artscan is the annual showcase for artists to present their work to buyers in the school market and artists who have successful showcases have built very lucrative tours out of their investment of time and resources into attending the event.
Much like Pacific Contact though, if you don’t happen to be one of the artists that apply and gets a showcase the appeal of attending the conference is severely diminished if you aren’t actually seen in performance by the buyers.
A few years back friends who have done very well from the tours that have been set up through ArtStarts suggested that I meet with the people in the office who help arrange the tours. I went in and had a meeting and learned more about what’s involved in preparing a study guide (a virtually mandatory aspect of touring schools) and what sort of schedule was involved with school tours, but also came up against a bit of a prejudice towards artists who had developed their material primarily for the street and festival milieu. The overwhelming feeling that I was given was that these tours were reserved for ‘higher art.’
I found this amusing and left the offices of Artstarts knowing that I could jump through the hoops required to provide them with a show that met their ‘higher art’ sensibility, but wondering if my time was really best spent doing so. You can glean the answer to this by the fact that I have yet to do a tour through Artstarts, but don’t let my experience stop you. Touring schools is the bread and butter for many performers and it’s certainly a lot of fun to perform for a gym full of enthusiastic ankle biters, so if that’s your bag, this might just be the perfect opportunity for you.
[…] they get as many shows in as possible in a fairly short period of time, what’s even better, Art Starts in Schools helps set these tours up much like the giggage that’s been set up for me in Winnipeg over the […]