Planning an event takes a lot of time and resources. It also takes volunteers and people that are open to hearing your ideas. At times it take forming committees to make events work. Sometimes it is hard to find people to sit on a committee and to disperse the work to others.
My committee for the All Abilities Art Expo was myself and two other people with disabilities. We met couple times a month for about three months. We talked about public relations, ideas on how to make the event accessible to people from all walks of life, we discussed entries we got and the people we were serving for this expo. We challenged ourselves to think outside the box.
Planning an event takes time. It also takes finding the right venue that meets your needs. People wouldn't think that wheelchair accessibility is everything for the event we planned it was everything. Being someone in wheelchair I knew what to look for. If I wasn't in wheelchair I might not have known what we needed. There are places that are labeled wheelchair accessible from the interior and exterior if you look at their bathrooms you will find accessibility flaws. There is nothing worse then being at an event and not being able to find an accessible bathroom. This one thing that someone might not think about when they do event planning. This is somethin
g of high importance. We also had to look at space, lighting, and a few other objectives. The particilar building we chose had a feature that isn't in most buildings. It had this setting for people that use hearing aids where they could change their hearing aide to setting be able hear audio. While we didn't utilize this feature it was nice to know it existed.
We had to make a budget for this event. Often the budget is what limits people. Due to my resourcefulness I was able to get items at lower cost then most would planning this type of event. I chose to make a lot of the items needed for the event including the decorations.
I printed the flyers at home. I took the time to fold them myself. I spent hours and weeks on this. I believe because of my resourcefulness I was able to save more money. I had asked people to volunteer to make cookies. I even purchased cookies that were marked down at Walmart. I shopped around for items that I couldn't make myself.
I used pinterest to come up with ideas for my sensory friendly corner. I used left over wrapping paper and boxes to make my pillars. I recycled bottles and other objects. I have some pictures that I will be putting up later so people can see some of the work I did. I also have it on my
Miss Amazing blog which people can look at some of pictures from the art expo there.
We utilized free sites like eventbrite, facebook, summit 365 and other sites to advertise. There were many hours I went out on the bus in my wheelchair to hang flyers. I also went out to collect resources about arts organizations. I made phone calls had items shipped to me. There was a lot of work that went into planning this event.
Our one weakness in the event planning process was finding organizations to come into the venue. We had a number of organizations sign up then back out at the last minute. So this is something we hope to work on for the future when we plan more events. We didn't fully meet my goal of connecting artists with organizations like we planned. We had lot of paper resources to give people. I think this made a difference. While it would been nice to have a representative from the organizations there we still were able to put resources in people's hands.
All in all event planning takes time. I enjoyed myself. You really build community with the people that you sit on a committee with. You also build community with the artists that are a part of your event. I created a facebook group so all the artists could get to know each other before the arts expo. This really made a big difference. I believe the artists felt more comfortable going to the event.
I hope to get more people involved as we create more events.
