For the first time in three years, hundreds of thousands of people will head downtown this weekend for the Columbus Arts Festival in what organizers hope is a return to normalcy.
鈥淚鈥檓 emotional right now,鈥� said Jami Goldstein with the Greater Columbus Arts Council, which hosts the festival. She laughs as she says 鈥渋t felt so good鈥� to meet with the organizing committee this week for the final time before the festival begins Friday.
鈥淓ven if it rains a little bit, I don鈥檛 think we鈥檙e going to care because we鈥檙e just so happy to be able to be back together and do this free festival for the Columbus community,鈥� said Goldstein.
This weekend鈥檚 event will be the first since 2019. The cancellation of the 2020 arts festival came to no one鈥檚 surprise, as most of the country and world were shutting down in the initial weeks of social distancing and 鈥渇lattening the curve.鈥� But the arts council calling off the 2021 event wasn鈥檛 as clear-cut and likely left a lot of money on the table at a time when many arts organizations were still struggling.
鈥淲e are into this period where we鈥檙e still living with this virus, but the vaccination rate is higher and people are generally safer in their immune system,鈥� Goldstein said.
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The arts festival is a private event supported largely by corporate sponsorships, alcohol sales and vendor booth fees. It鈥檚 organized by the Greater Columbus Arts Council, a granting organization that Goldstein said saw revenue from a local hotel bed tax and a ticket tax 鈥渄rop to zero鈥� early in the pandemic. She said it鈥檚 since largely recovered.
The festival, launched in 1962, is celebrating its 60th year this year, even though this is only the 58th festival because of recent cancellations. The first event, called the 鈥淒owntown Festival of the Arts,鈥� was held on the Statehouse lawn. It moved to the newly-constructed Scioto Mile in 2012.
This year鈥檚 festival runs Friday through Sunday with more than 200 vendors selected from nearly 600 applications. Ohio will be represented by more than 40 artists this year, with 28 of them coming from Central Ohio. Thirty-four states will be represented, as well as the province of Ontario.
