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Ella Powell:

You are listening to WTJU. On Friday, October 31, Halloween, Ix Art Foundation
presents its Fantasy Festival, featuring live art, music, and performances from 2pm-10pm.

For Arts This Week, we spoke to Ewa Harr, the Executive director of the Ix Art Foundation.

Can you share a bit about the IX Art Foundation with me?
What are your primary goals and what role do you play in the Charlottesville community?

Ewa Harr:

So we’re the Ix Arts Foundation. We’re a nonprofit arts organization that manages the outdoor IX Art Park and the indoor, Looking Glass immersive Art Museum. Our mission is to bring people joy through art.

Ella Powell:
How would you describe the essence of the Fantasy Festival?

Ewa Harr:

When you say IX Art Park, a lot of times, people think of the whole business park, which we’re not. IX Art Park is really the area that has the stage and the rainbow Plaza and the grassy area with the vine dome. So that’s the area where the festival will be taking place. We produce a few events every year. Fantasy fest is a celebration of imagination and creativity. Get in touch with your inner wizard or fairy or superhero or whatever your alter ego might be. We have a magical marketplace full of wonderful vendors. We have live music all day. I’m really excited about the lineup this year, because we have the Falsies kicking us off, then Ships in the Night, and Brisk is closing us out. And there’s also going to be a lot of family fun, some roving characters and face painting. It is a fundraising event. We ask for a five to twenty-five dollar donation from people attending. But if that is cost prohibitive for anybody, it is free to attend. This year we’re also doing trick or treating from six to eight and then our after party, which is a really fun dance party with three DJs this year kicks off at nine o’clock inside the looking glass. It starts off with DJ Brielle, and then Disco Pomegranate and then Ravida.

Ella Powell:
What types of performances can we expect to be at the festival? Are there primarily local artists and vendors or will there be artists from several localities?

Ewa Harr:
I would say regional, a lot of kind of local, but then also coming from Richmond and the surrounding areas. We have a magician and a balloon artist and free art making. So there’s something for everyone, and it’s fun for the whole family. The daytime outdoor festival is for all ages.

Ella Powell:

I understand that a couple years back, the foundation had to determine whether it
was feasible or not to continue hosting the festival and other large community events
considering budget cuts. At a time when the arts community as a whole is facing
unprecedented pressure, as the executive director of Ix Art Foundation, how do you
prioritize the health of your foundation while catering to the community?

Ewa Harr:

Two years ago, we had a funding gap and had to really restructure a lot of our internal dynamics to be sustainable moving forward and focus on our, you know, sources of revenue–have a long-term plan for how to make those sustainable. We’ve, I think, accomplished that. We’ve rebuilt a lot of our foundation, and have gotten to the point where now we can start adding back some programming or creating new programming, I guess the difference being that now anything we launch needs to, you know, be kind of underwritten like the reason we were able to bring back arts from underground is because we got funding from Bama works, for example, our outdoor children’s area. It’s free to the public almost year round, and a lot of costs to kind of maintain that and upkeep it comes from public donations. And so our festivals are another way that we, you know, kind of can celebrate the arts and bring the community in at either no cost or low cost. The goal of it is to fundraise for the nonprofit so that we are able to continue to do this kind of like fun and free creative programming for our community. I really, you know, strongly believe in our mission, you know, which is to bring our community joy through art on a spectrum of creativity. So it can mean visual art, but it can mean music. It can mean movement. It can mean a variety of self expression, by, I think, creating a welcoming and safe space, we give a lot of people the opportunity to experience that that might not get it otherwise. And I think that is really, really important, especially kind of in the climate we’re in now, for people to have a safe place where they can come together as a community.

Ella Powell:

On Friday, October 31, Halloween, come out to Ix Art Park between 2pm-10pm for the Fantasy Festival. The event is kid-friendly with trick or treating offered from 6-8pm and a range of other mystifying activities. Tickets are $15. For more information, visit IxArtpark.org. Arts This Week is supported by the UVA Arts Council and Piedmont Virginia Community College. PVCC Arts presents a rich array of dance, music, theater, and visual arts programming. Learn more at pvcc.edu. For WTJU, I’m Ella Powell.