Given we’re just over a month away from the new dates for the Sydney Craft and Quilt Fair (1st-5th September), and Sydney is still in lockdown and looks like it could be for some time yet, I am really unsure that it will go ahead. Maybe the organisers will postpone it again. It’s hard to know, because it’s likely that they don’t know yet either. None of us are very good at our crystal ball skills, these days…
I want to acknowledge that Expertise Events, who run the Sydney Craft and Quilt Fair, are trying to do the best with the knowledge that they have. They want to run their fabulous events for the vendors and general public, but they also want to be safe and not put people at risk. I don’t envy them in their decision-making, or their difficulties in running their business at a time like this. For me, they have been great to work with over the years, and very supportive of my business, as I am of theirs, and that’s a great relationship that I really would like to continue!
I am grateful that by the time the new dates (as they stand) come around, I will be fully vaccinated. If it had run on the original dates, I was feeling very nervous about the fact that I had been unable at that time to have either my first or second vaccine shot.
Moving forward, if the Sydney Craft and Quilt Fair is cancelled OR postponed, I’m thinking of somehow running my own “online show”. Just to be quite clear, if it is *postponed*, then I’d still want to do the in person, real life Sydney Craft and Quilt Fair when it happens. So the online show would be in *addition* to that, unless I deem being present at an in-person show simply is too dangerous and risky for me, who lives in a small country town where we just don’t have a good health service. I would never want to be the person who brought covid to Walcha.
If I was to run an online show, somehow I would endeavour to give you as much of the show experience as I could, but online. So what are the experiences that you get at an in person show that you usually can’t get otherwise?
1. We get to have conversations – I get to have them with you and you get to have them with me. I love those conversations. They can be so thought-provoking. So, somehow, I’d want to be able to have those conversations. Maybe question and answer sessions on Facebook or Zoom.
2. You get to see my work, in person, in real life. You can get up close and really look at it. You can ask me questions about the pieces. You can be inspired by the array of projects. So, I think having videos of me showing the projects I would have displayed, showing you the details I think you’d like to see, and talking about them, might be good.
3. You get to see my new products. I would therefore want to show you all the new stuff, and explain it to you, probably via video.
4. Usually when there are fewer customers around, I sit and embroider at the front of my stand. It catches peoples’ eyes as they walk past. Some of my best conversations happen when people come to watch. So I’d love to just sit and embroider with you able to watch and ask questions. This might be able to be a Youtube live video or a Zoom session.
These are the things I have been thinking about, in an effort to still be able to exhibit, even though the in person show might not be able to go ahead at this stage.
What do you think? Would you be interested in this? Do you have suggestions for things I could include in an online show that I may not have thought of? One of the difficulties for me is timezones – you’re not all on the east coast of Australia, so I’d need to perhaps run multiple sessions at different times. However, this also presents opportunities for a much wider audience than just me exhibiting at a show in Sydney, Australia!
I just think it might be worth giving it a go. It will likely be a huge amount of work for me. Probably far more than an in-person show. It might be a terrible flop, but it might also be something new and fantastic that we agree is certainly better than no show at all! And for those of you who would never make it to the Sydney Craft and Quilt Fair because of distance, finances, health or other reasons, this might mean you can participate in an experience you would never have otherwise.
White Threads is the blog of Yvette Stanton, the author, designer, publisher behind Vetty Creations' quality needlework books and embroidery products.
Ooooo, that does sound tempting! I would tune in for sure, because I would LOVE to see your booth in person and that will almost certainly never happen! What I like about booths is, of course, the up-close in-person experience, but I also like being able to look at the full range of somebody’s work. I’d want to take a good close look at the Hardanger things, because I’ve wanted to try Hardanger for years and years. (Someday I’ll get to it!) And the Sardinian things!
Thanks for your thoughts, Jean! It won’t be a booth as such. I’m not going to set that up in my home and then show you around – though if I had the walls and the space, I would love to! I’ll show you what would have been in it, if it had been set up.
I think this is an awesome idea. I missed last years show and given the Sydney situation, I am not hopeful that it will go ahead this year. Lockdown is definitely getting tedious and I would absolutely love an online class. If nothing more than an opportunity to share some ideas and have a discussion with other likeminded individuals would be wonderful. I am sure that whatever you decide upon will be fantastic. Thank you for coming up with this idea!
Thanks Suzanne! Just to clarify – this won’t be an online class. It will likely be a series of videos, some chat sessions, maybe live video/zoom sessions over some days. But it won’t be a class. That’s a whole different kettle of fish, but a kettle of fish I’m also working towards!
One of the delights of the shows is falling into conversation with other people visiting the stand. You can get that sort of effect in GatherTown, which is another online platform, which uses proximity of avatars to start video connections. I think doing an entire Craft And Quilt Fair in GatherTown would be more that a bit challenging, but your own booth, and a nearby virtual coffee stall for people to continue chatting at might be feasible..
Thanks Rachel. I don’t know anything about Gathertown. It seems like something I might need to investigate. Of course, it may be that if it goes well this year, I might do it again in future years. In that case, I don’t have to *perfect* it this year. As my aunt said to me many years ago, “Yvette, you don’t have to do everything NOW.”