Make It So – A Call For Proposals

The Edmonton Poetry Festival will bring our poetry community alive from April 23 – 29, 2012. It will be a great week – we hope you’ll help make it that way. The festival planning committee is willing to entertain proposals for poetry-related activities during that time frame. Here’s what we’re hoping for:

• Innovations that take poetry to the public in unusual ways, across the city.
• Activities that are consistent with the festival’s vision:
  • To engage people from across the city, of all ages and cultures, as creators and audiences.
  • To stimulate the growth and quality of work created and performed by Edmonton artists.
  • Over the long term, to become a destination for writers and audiences – the place for national and international poets to appear, and the event where you’ll hear the most accomplished, interesting and engaging poetry to be found anywhere.
• AND activities organized in a competent, professional way that will do us proud.

Think of it as a BYOV opportunity. The festival will help with marketing and promoting your event. We may be able to help with some of the costs of honoraria and production – our budget is tight, but we recognize that a little help can go a long way to make things happen. We can probably help connect you to other resources.

But we’re not looking for suggestions of bright ideas for us to do – we’ve got plenty of those already. We’re looking for those of you with an idea you’d like to make happen and the commitment to make it so.

We have room for up to five spots of this nature on the 2012 festival calendar. If you’re interested, send us a brief letter of proposal outlining:

• The nature of your idea, and the audience it would reach.
• What makes it different and how it fits the festival vision.
• Any costs you foresee.
• The background of the people who want to make it happen.

Deadline for proposals is December 15. We’ll make decisions by the first week in January, and finalize the details with you as soon as possible after that, giving you three months to implement your idea.

Update: Proposals are now closed.