Hello, I just wanted to say a few things about the vendor application process on zapplication and the abuse I felt when dealing with Manayunk via Zapplication. I'm not saying that there is something wrong with Zap but I am saying that I do feel a little abused by the system. Earlier this year I decided that I would apply once again to the Manayunk Festival (I don't know what possessed me), only to find that I had posted on my calendar the wrong deadline date and had missed the actual deadline by a day. Since I had done the show a few times before, I thought I would write to explain what had happen and to ask if I could still apply. I was told to send some pictures and I did...I was then told that the jury was interested in seeing my full application and that Manayunk was going to be reopening the application on Zap and that I needed to wait for them to get back to me and when they did, to apply immediately, which I did.
Now, I'm not going to say that I was mislead in reference to what was told to me, but I did feel a little bit used after I applied and got the response that I was on the wait list. My brain kicked in and I started to think about the whole process. I realized that the person I was dealing with had informed me that they had a humongous amount of great artist apply this year (which by the way was confirmed in an article after the show had occurred), but because of the large number of people who had missed the application deadline, they would be reopening the application for a waitlist. Wait a minute ...if they already had way too many great artist to apply, why did they need to take more applications for a wait list? As we all know, Manayunk has a reputation for having it's share of questionable vendors (buy/sell) at most of their shows and according to the articles I have read about this year, this year was no exception. As I said there was also mention of an unusual amount of some really great artist this year , but if they had more than their usual share of great artist to choose from, why would they need all the people who missed the application deadline to do a late application for a waitlist (sounds greedy to me), they could have filled the show with the first applicants. Just in case you are wondering...no I never moved off the wait list (I didn't think I would be) and yes, I know that was my fault because I should have been paying attention.
The reason I just couldn't be quiet about this situation any longer is because it is only the beginning of August and the show was at the end of June and already in just a little over a months' time I received a notice today, that the 2014 application is already on line and the deadline is... not until March. I would say that is an extremely long time to have an application open and a convenient way to make a whole lot of money off a lot of gullible and desperate people that they have no space for nor any intentions of placing most and I would say that is abusive and dead wrong. Many of us have already felt that the application fees were killing us and that a lot of shows abuse the application process by accepting far more applications than spaces they can provide, but this is ridiculous. Even when a show is good, there should be some kind of a breakoff point, so that good artist and crafters can put their monies into another more likely place, where they at least have a chance of getting accepted and having somewhere to work at those times (this is a JOB for most). By the time we are done paying application fees for the shows we would like to participate in, not to mention the shows we have to apply to as a safety net... just in case we don't get accepted in the first choice, we are scrambling to get our money together to pay for all the shows that we do get into. And at the times that they are due (usually several at a time), it is usually the slow time of the year, way before the time of the first show and no real excess of money is coming in. Some of the money wasted on application fees to shows that we had no real chance (like the lottery) could have paid for at least one of those shows.
I don't know, but it just seems like a vicious circle sometimes, which has been expressed by many artist, especially this year. The cost of application fees, show fees, raw good costs, postage, photographers for pictures, accountants, insurance, office supplies, merchant fees, I-phones and I-pads, credit card machines, hotel, food and travel only seem to be going up and up and when you arrive home after all of this, you count your money (if you made any) only to realize you still have a few more shows to pay for before the next season starts, then you recognize that you almost made nothing. You pay for those last shows...ahhhh...! a breather, and then you receive an e-mail reminder that the winter shows are now posted and the applications are due in a couple of days, and then the cycle starts all over again.
So when you are abused the way that it seems Manayunk abused a great deal of people this year and have even bigger intentions of abusing in 2014, it really makes you wonder just what is all of this for and just who is making the money? It sometimes seem that we are creators of more than just art, we help to create a lot of jobs for a lot of other people who actually sometimes get rich because of our contributions and some not so rich who at least get to hold their money for a longer period of time than we do. Something has to give or soon there will be very little motivation to do this thing we do...or maybe we will be motivated to create a new way of doing it. Thanks for listening.
T. Howard
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