H Street Festival Seeks Volunteers

It's almost festival time of year again and the H Street Festival needs your help to make it a success. Check out my photos of past H Street festivals. Or watch last year's official video.

Here's the skinny from the organizers:

Festival Mission:
The Festival on H Street “Music Festival and Bazaar” is scheduled for September 15th, 2007, The focus of the Festival of H Street is the strategic revitalization of the business district of H Street, and the promotion of Arts in DC.

Our Volunteer Needs:
This year, the volunteer tasks will be project-based. They will work on event and merchant management, grassroots and traditional marketing, community organization partnership development, artist research, and festival themes.

Our Specific Current Volunteer Needs:

Community Organization Partnership Developer:
We would like to work with as many community organizations and nonprofits that support the area and/or the arts as possible. We realize, however, that there may be organizations and/or projects that we have not yet learned about. Do you know of a great program that works with adopted kids? How about a organization that provides arts education to youth? Or how about a non-profit that offers after school tutoring? Maybe even a group that provides neighborhood watch in the area, or an organization that can set up a watch group? Any organization or group providing a beneficial service will not be charged for a booth. We have a PDF of our media kit that can be sent to these community organizations. We just need you to let them know about the opportunity, and have them contact us to register for their space. If this sounds like something you can do, please contact us. We want to expose every organization that’s helping our city.

Artist Research:
Do you know of a great band? Know any artists, authors, fashion designers or poets looking for a place to sell their work? Can you organize their information and provide us with a way to hear their music, or see their work, as well as giving us their contact information. For musicians, we need four song samples, a telephone number, and an email address. For other artist, we need a webpage, a telephone number and an email address. If you could provide that information, you’ll be able to help. We pride ourselves on the artists at our event, and have had great artists every year. We have over 30 musicians each year, and tons of artists! We know, however, that there are always new great artists that we may have not yet heard. We’d love to go to every show, listen to great music, and find hot talent – but then we wouldn’t have time for anything else. So we are looking for suggestions from volunteers, with the caveat that you provide all the necessary information.

Event and Merchant Management:
The event management opportunities will center on making sure that artists are at their designated performance area 20 minutes prior to their performances. In addition, we need people to provide information to festival attendees and to assist vendors. We are interested in hearing from people that would like to help as soon as possible.

Grassroots and Traditional Marketing:
We need help with marketing and promotions. This is principally grassroots promotion. We need people that can disseminate flyers in the neighborhood, surrounding areas, and at other festivals occurring between now and our date of September 15th.

Festival Themes:
We are a creative bunch, but are always open for ideas. We want this event to be an event that assists all aspects of the professional arts within D.C. Do you have an idea that you think would be really cool? Is there a specific aspect of the arts that you would like to see highlighted? Do you have games ideas for the children’s pavilion? Come to us with ideas, and embrace a festival that is all about you and your corridor.

If you would like to volunteer to assist with this event, please send an email to Kwasi@festivalonh.org. Please inform of us of any special skills, or interest that you may have.