The 51st Annual Kimball Arts Festival Goes Virtual

The Kimball Arts Festival is live! This year, the festival has found a new, virtual home: check it out at https://parkcitykimballartsfestival.org/. 

While Main Street is usually home to the Park City Kimball Arts Festival, where thousands of professional artists showcase and sell their work, the Kimball Arts Center has worked to honor that 50-year history and embrace the change brought by 2020. 

Put simply, the website is awesome! The homepage looks like a digital, interactive map of downtown Park City. It features 150+ artists, and every illustration, text box, and bubble on the website can be clicked on to further explore. 

Dive deeper with video content from the Art Talks series. A new video is released every Wednesday, and they range from drawing courses, conversations with local restaurant chefs, local bands, and arts and culture roundtable discussions. The Arts Talks adapt to the style and filming preferences of the artists and featured speakers. The Kimball Arts Festival team helps with everything from brainstorming to filming to editing. 

Special Events Manager, Hillary Gilson, says, “Initially, between March and June we were focused on hosting an in-person festival while meeting all Summit County health regulations. But, we soon realized that it was our social responsibility to cancel the in-person event, and to instead retain grant money to redesign the website to provide the best virtual experience possible.”

In fact, the website’s purpose is twofold. First, the festival promotes resident artists. Check out the artists and explore the new work they’ve added to their collection. Second, the site is designed to help the Summit County and Park City economies. It’s a community engagement hub.

Hillary continues, “If there is a silver lining of the Covid-19 pandemic for the Kimball Arts Festival, it is the extended timeline for the website. The website will be up indefinitely, and we will be adding each Wednesday to the Art Talks video series through the end of the year, and into 2021.”

Covid-19 or not, it is inevitable that arts festivals would eventually adapt to have an online presence. While the time crunch was a challenge, Hillary reflects and says, “the online platform modernizes our festival structure and ultimately makes arts and culture more accessible.” 

The hard work has been worth it — our community will enjoy this online, local arts presence for many months to come!