Artrageous Extravaganza

Dare County Arts Council organise an annual extravaganza called 'Artrageous' – I remember seeing this on their website earlier this year and finding it amazing that Bideford Bay Creatives had put on an event with the same name last December (a different kind of event though). I was looking forward to witnessing this and getting involved behind the scenes to understand how its all done and exactly what it entails. To say its just an art auction is an understatement. A team of about 20 volunteers, some of whom are on the Arts Council Board, work on this event year round and it culminates in an evening Art Auction to raise money for the Arts Council's Education programme. The most staggering thing other than the $20,000 they raise annually is the amount of support generated through the local community. It takes place over 2 days – the first day being a Childrens' Day with hands on art workshops where kids paint images of the area and these are used to promote the following year's event. The best ones are framed and auctioned off 1 year later – the Arts Council rather than children own the posters to encourage their parents to bid for them. They can sell for $60 to $100. One lady I spoke to was the proud and happy winner of her own daughter's poster. She had a poster in the auction in the 2 previous years also which both raised such high prices that Mom was out bid both times! There's also a kid's auction where stuff is donated by local businesses such as bikes and skateboards to be bidded for and won.

The art auction took place in the Ramada Inn at Kill Devil Hills, going North up the 'bypass' road from Manteo. Dave and I arrived in the morning at 10.30 and we both helped to put artwork on display for both the silent and live auctions. The silent auction had around a 100 pieces donated and each piece had to be identified and a bid sheet written out to go with it. All artwork had a starting price of $25 with bids going up in $10 increments. The highest bidder, identified by their bidder number, wins the art. This was open all night from 6pm and closed around 9pm. The live auction programme started with doors open at 5pm, food and drink available and whilst browsing the art on show and listening to live music from a band. At 6pm there were speeches from Kitty Dough (President of Dare County Arts Council) and Laura Martier, Executive Director. At the end of Laura's speech she announced that she is working with us on planning an arts exchange programme, and that was wonderful to have it endorsed in public. Throughout the auction itself, I was helping out on the check out desk – a bit of a procedure I had to learn - get the bidder's file, add up all the purchases, add 7.75% tax, total it up and take the payment. The 'runners' (including Dave) went off with the sheet or ticket to collect the artwork. It worked well as a system and went very smoothly, it was just a bit busy at times as a few people all wanted to check out at once.

It was very valuable to take part behind the scenes and during the event, its given me an insight into how its all planned and executed and this is something that we at Bideford Bay Creatives aspire to do. Hopefully now we can go ahead and plan an event like this, perhaps not as big in scale at least not right away, to help raise funds for the BBC.