This year’s Essex County Arts and Crafts Festivals will be held at the Essex County Fairgrounds in Westport on Friday, July 6^th at the start of Westport’s July 4^th weekend celebrations and also on Wednesday, August 1, a mid-week event a the height of the summer resident and tourist season. We’re inviting fine artists and craft artists from across Essex County and the neighboring region to display and offer to sell their work to what we expect will be a large number of viewers.

The event was first held in late August, 2018, made possible, in part, by the Essex County Arts Council’s Cultural Assistance Program Grant with funding provided by Essex County. In addition, the event was sponsored by the Heritage House, and the Westport Chamber of Commerce. It proved a significant success for the vendors who participated. Several hundred people attended and almost all the crafters were pleased with the sales that were generated. Attendees came from 22 different states, registering some 109 different zip codes for their home residences.

Last year the Arts & Crafts Festival garnered significant media attention, with interviews and article about it on North Country Public Radio, two local television stations, and newspapers across the region, as well as on the web. This year we anticipate a much more extensive promotion campaign to and response from the broadcast and print media as well as on-line sites. In addition, the Essex County Arts and Crafts Festival has established a website www.essexartsandcrafts.org that will present representative images of each artist’s or crafter’s work, as well as brief artists’ statements, contact information, and links to their professional and personal websites.

Already, in mid-April, artists and craftspeople from the following towns have registered to participate: Westport; Adirondack; Schroon Lake; Lewis; Willsboro; Port Henry; Ticonderoga; Elizabethtown; Chestertown; Wilmington; Keeseville.

Furthermore, the Arts & Crafts Festival has just been awarded a Cultural Assistance Program Grant from the Essex County Arts Council, with funding provided by Essex County.