This is my first year as Festival Director, and we made some ambitious plans. As we began to spin things up, I posted for our cast and crew a list of goals that I was setting for the 2011 Festival. I’d like to revisit that list and share some of what we did to move toward those goals.

1. Recommit to excellence in fine art

For the past few years, the Festival received some criticism that performance was overshadowing the visual art. Instead of cutting performance back, the goal here was to bring the quality and presentation of the visual art up. What did we do toward this goal?

• We promoted our Call for Art far and wide, and the response was enormous. Our jury had a huge selection to choose from—more than ever before.
• We expanded our visual art jury from three experts to five, including Bonnie Biggs (Art Department Chair from Cornish College of the Arts) and Gene Burt PhD (one of the world’s leading experts on erotic art and author of Dictionary of Erotic Artists).
• The jury accepted only 10% of the submissions, a true cream-of-the-crop selection.
• We found a new venue (Fremont Studios) that would better showcase artwork in all its forms—visual, performance, film, music.
• We invested in hanging our art from the ceiling in a creative new way.
• The new venue enabled us to keep the art lights bright the entire time with simultaneous proper theatrical lighting on the main stage.
• We produced a printed keepsake Catalog of artwork from the Festival. (downloadable here)
• We are in the process of creating an online gallery of the visual art.
• We offered a grant of up to $750 per artist for the creation of interactive installation art.
• We modernized and streamlined the process for purchasing the art. Art Guides were able to run credit cards on the spot for anyone who wanted to purchase art.
• We hit our goal and sold more than 25% of the art from the show.
• We completely revamped the Festival Store under new leadership, refocusing around artists featured in the exhibition.

2. Maintain leadership in performance excellence.

Performance is an exciting and beautiful part of how human beings express the erotic. What did we do?

• We brought aboard a talented new Performance Director, David Crellin (aka Armitage Shanks) to craft an all new main stage show.
• We recruited an Ambient Performance Director, Eva Luna, to add creative new textural elements.
• Our new venue featured a sophisticated stage and full technical capabilities to showcase performance.
• We listened to last year’s feedback, diversifying the types of featured performance.
• Based on response to our post-Festival survey, the new show and the ambient performances were a hit.

3. Reaffirm our sense of adventure and risk-taking.

Inevitably, there comes a point in an organization’s development where “playing it safe” begins to take over. Did we succeed in taking interesting risks?

• We jumped from Seattle Center into a new venue: Fremont Studios.
• We adopted Square, a modern way of selling tickets, art, and merchandise from anywhere using a mobile device.
• We published an anthology of our Literary Art (available for purchase on this page).
• We created a Red Light District theme as an immersive environment to tie everything together.
• We participated in the Fremont Sunday Market, complete with a marching band (Titanium Sporkestra).
• We laid the groundwork to continue to expand beyond our annual weekend event. (Stay tuned for big news about this.)

4. Enrich our status as a major destination event.

A “festival” is far more than just a gallery show. We strive to offer a full, rich experience that attracts visitors from across the nation and around the world. How did we do?

• We dramatically expanded our workshop and lecture offerings, and added other elements like short film to bring more depth and content to the Festival.
• We featured three full days of activities, two late-night after-parties, and an off-site post-Festival play party.
• We partnered with Juxtapoz, expanding awareness of our event to artists across the nation.
• We allied ourselves with the sexy Hotel Max to facilitate easy out-of-town attendance and participation.
• We partnered with Crown Black Car to make transportation easier.

5. Overhaul our organizational and leadership structure.

With growth comes a need for structure. What did we do?

• Worked with Shunpike, a non-profit dedicated to assisting other arts organizations with business matters, to rethink our organization and our institutional goals.
• We formed a Steering Committee to work more closely with the board of the Foundation for Sex Positive Culture.
• Built a new organizational chart based around empowerment, delegation, and transparency.
• Recruited hundreds of new talented people.
• Budgeted new ways to recruit, reward, and retain volunteers.

6. Create a plan for financial stability.

We are a proud 501c3 nonprofit. We must have a plan for financial stability in order for the event to be sustainable. Not only do we want to continue the Festival each year, we seek to improve it, to see it grow, and to better support our artists and volunteers each year. This is only possible with smart financial planning. We worked with accounting experts to completely change the way we handle Festival finances. So far, so good.

7. Invite and facilitate more participation from the queer community.

We strive to be ever more inclusive and diverse, both in our staff and in our exhibition.

• We collaborated with Three Dollar Bill Cinema, producers of The Seattle Lesbian and Gay Film Festival, to create a Short Film Exhibition with a strong queer component.
• Peter Jabin, deputy director of Gay City, sat on our visual art jury, along with two other members of the queer community.
• We hosted a diversity panel discussion to encourage conversation on the topic.
• We featured a broad array of queer artists in the exhibition and on stage.
• We partnered with Seattle Gay News, and ran several full-page ads in that paper.

8. Go after sponsors, donors, and grants.

The average successful non-profit brings in a large part of its income from donors, sponsors, and grants. The sexual nature of our event sometimes makes this difficult for us.

• We built relationships with The Stranger newspaper, Juxtapoz magazine, City Arts magazine, Apulent Catering, and a host of other sponsors (see our sponsor page for a full list.)
• We launched a donation campaign.
• We produced our first-ever Festival fundraiser, An Intimate Soirée at Steve Jensen Studios.
• Kwanchai Jonathan Mathews Design Group hosted a second annual celebration and fundraiser for the Festival.
• Know any good grant writers?

9. Feature a sex/play party.

Not everyone is interested in this, to be sure. Given our pedigree, however, it’s a mystery why a Festival-related sex/play event has never been on the Center for Sex Positive Culture calendar. We fixed that.

10. Offer a short film exhibition.

Events like HUMP have shown that Seattle audiences love them some erotic film. A robust partnership with Three Dollar Bill Cinema, along with a sweet little movie theater built right into Fremont Studios, allow us to bring erotic short film to the Festival in a big way. I’m excited to see where this part of the Festival will go.

11. Continue efforts to reach young people.

The after-party components of the Festival are one of the ways we reach a different, more youthful crowd—a crowd that might not otherwise attend sex-positive or art-focused events. Bringing younger people into a sex-positive environment, opening their hearts and minds through music and other art, is exactly in line with our mission.

• We opened daytime hours (including all day Sunday) to anyone 18+ to keep the Festival accessible to younger adults.
• We worked to reach younger artists during our Call for Art, contacting hundreds of colleges and universities across the nation.
• Record attendance at both our Friday and Saturday after-parties shows we are on the right track.

Our entire team worked their pretty asses off for months to achieve the things listed above. I am so grateful to work with such incredible people.

I invite your feedback on these goals and on the future of the Festival. Feel free to write director@seattleerotic.org with your thoughts.

Stay tuned for big announcements in the near future. We are cooking up some mischief that we think you’ll enjoy.

Clayton Hibbert, Festival Director