First Thursday Fayetteville has a Web site | CF
Clipped Fresh — By Christopher Spencer on March 21, 2010 at 8:05 pm
COMMENT: Fayetteville Visitors Bureau officially took over First Thursday Fayetteville last week and a new Web site appears to be active.
The effort began last year with the initiative of folks at the Fayetteville Underground and ddp gallery. It was initially an effort to get people out to downtown art galleries.
Once crowds started to appear, other groups such as downtown merchants and city officials took notice, hoping to get involved with the event.
The Fayetteville Visitors Bureau, run by the city’s advertising and promotion commission, was given lead organization status by the city council. The commission and bureau are financed through taxes on the city’s hotels, motels and restaurants.
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9 Comments
Look at that crappy web site and compare it with the sites from Heather Gerlaugh. The paper said they had a proposal brought forward and the City squashed it.
Now our tax dollars are paying for this amateur attempt by the Visitors’ Bureau.
I’m not excited about the government taking over when things are going well without them.
I’m not commenting on the quality of one site versus another. I certainly have no eye for visuals. If anything is aesthetically pleasing on Ozarks Unbound, it’s because of others help, not my own eye.
But, for the record, Heather Kendrick-Gerlaugh has done previous writing on this site, but no longer contributes.
It does appear – based on the copyright mark – that the newly hired Jessi Edwards, communications manager of Fayetteville Visitors Center built the site. So the site design was internal, presumably.
Actually, Heather Gerlaugh did not submit a proposal to the city or anyone else involved in planning the event. The paper got that wrong, or rather Mr. Petty got that wrong. And the Visitors Bureau is continuing the event management without charging the taxpayers extra, unlike a private for-profit comapny like Gerlaugh’s. They’ve been working with the city, downtown merchants and galleries since the beginning, Gerlaugh came in late and wanted to take over efforts already going on AND get paid for it. That doesn’t seem right to me.
Good decision City Council!! The Visitors Bureau is the perfect group to take this great event to the next level.
What is the URL to the First Thursday website? Am I missing it?
It’s the bold text right under the picture. Just click on that. Also the url is http://www.firstthursdayfayetteville.com/index.html
Thank you Mr. Spencer! I went this past Thursday and it was quite enjoyable.
Glad you enjoyed it, Sarah.
well, i have some obvious concerns. first of all, i don’t think it’s fair to say first Thursday was taken over by anyone. i think this can be a great event for everyone, including myself as an artist at the underground. do i like that some big name companies are now on this front page where our beloved art should be? obviously. again, just like everything with fayetteville- government doesn’t get it.
they come in, take over, then wonder why the art scene dies. it’s because they want everything to become a blues fest instead of something to actually celebrate the visual and performing arts. there are so many venues for people to go drink beer and hang outside and listen to music, i just don’t get why this event had to be swamped so quickly by money and politics, then become watered down by kids, balloons, vendors and very LITTLE to do with fine art.
to be fair, i have seen an actual decrease in sales while others have seen remarkable increases at the F.U. – but i’ll say this… the minute you involve wal-mart into the mix on the First thurs fayetteville homepage. that’s the minute i got aggravated and really stopped respecting our local government’s effort to support the arts.