FAT Village Struggles to Create an Arts District in Culture-Starved Broward
New Times By Stefan Kamph Thursday, Apr 21 2011
An article from New Times about the difficulty starting up an arts district in the old warehouse area of downtown Fort Lauderdale. A lagging economy, lack of art buyers, property owners with undefined visions, high rent, crime, galleries to spread out, unenthusiastic general public, lack of major artist to draw people in and landlord - artist feuds all contribute to the lackluster gallery walks and high turn over of new galleries.
A major gallery as an anchor and more syergy with the city and county arts organizations would be a great start. Also lower rents for the first few years to attract more galleries would help fill in some of the dead spaces. But most importantly, in most cities these "art districs" bubble up organically out of the need from a large arts movement for cheap exhibition space. Does Fort Lauderdale have a large enough amount of professional artists? Or with rents throughout South Florida's many warehouse districts being relatively cheap are there just pleanty of other gallery space oportunities? I have never heard an artist complain about a lack of cheap space in Fort Lauderdale. I wonder if trying to engineer this arts district from the top down will work in the long run. I will continue to show my support by attenting the art walks which occur the 4th Saturday of each month. GL
This Saturday night May 26th will be an exciting art walk - the "South Florida Graffiti Expo"
The feverishly anticipated NEW ERA South Florida Graffiti Expo is being curated and produced by Renda Writer of WeMerge Magazine, Saturday May 28th @ FAT Village Arts District.
The south end of the event will be converging at 17 NW 5th St., with live performances and DJ's on the north side of the event inside The Projects located at 523 NW 1st Avenue.
This 12-hour event will feature 50+ graffiti artists painting live all day and night, infusing 50,000 square feet of graffiti along the west exterior walls of warehouse spaces at FAT Village Arts District.
The monthly FAT Village Art Walk, which is held on the last Saturday of every month, are on the same day of the Graffiti Expo. The Art Walk starts at 7 p.m. to 11 p.m. featuring open artist studios and gallery showcases throughout FAT Village.
To download map of FAT Village Arts District, click HERE
To check out a video walk through of the pre-event presented by Renda Writer, visit FAT Village Arts
To RSVP for the NEW ERA South Florida Graffiti Expo - 2011, click HERE
FAT Village Arts website
Link to New Times Article about FAT Village
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