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  Connie Mettler October 30, 2013 at 9:48am

  I've updated that graph on why people attend art fairs, fyi. It's still pretty small and I hope you'll all bear in mind that this is our first attempt and hope next year's will be written better.

  One of the questions asked on the survey was "Do you plan your vacations to attend art fairs?" About 65% said no, which is understandable -- we are trying to get at the travel aspect of people coming to the shows. But what I suspected is they may not plan to travel specifically for a show, but they do plan a visit to a specific city for other purposes to coincide with an art affair. From one of my respondents: 

  By the way, are you from Louisville?  I lived there all my life until the past 8 years.  Now I'm in SW Florida. My son and many friends are still in Louisville so I just plan my trips around the St. James Art Show.  Can't think of a better excuse!!! 
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  Connie Mettler October 29, 2013 at 2:44pm

  With you on that, Geri. I was very heartened by the responses. You and I both attend art fairs probably more than any other outdoor excursion/destination and what attracts us to them? Yes, the art is first - even though we don't mind it at all if it is a beautiful day in a classy location with good food nearby, the gravy, so to speak.

  One of my favorite quotes from the survey, we asked how an art fair could improve:

  Less non relevant sales booths. If I'm going to an art fair, I'm not interested in buying windows for my house.
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  geri a. wegner October 29, 2013 at 1:54pm

  Am I the only one who found it interesting that things not art related were the least important factors in determining the best art fairs?  Perhaps all those directors and promoters that have been listening to IFEA and adding more and more non-art related activities should  take a deep breath and stop trying to come up with more and more silly activities and let the art speak for itself.  
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  Connie Mettler October 28, 2013 at 9:36pm

  It is my reporting, Jim, of the results that were in error. Here is the question I asked: 

  Please rate the following options as to their importance for you in determining what is a "best art fair." Choose #1 first and then pull down each choice separately and rate it from 1 to 9.

  So you can see I asked them to rank them in numerical order. There were nine choices.

  Rating average:

  "Quality of art" - 2.56

  "Variety of art" - 3.38

  "Venue setting & ambiance" - 4.05

  "affordability of art work" - 4.66

  "# of exhibitors" - 4.6

  "location, restaurants, shopping, parking, accessibility" - 5.53

  "good food and music" - 6.05

  "family friendly with activities for children included" - 6.94

  "all the other activities nearby" - 7.23

  I asked them to rank their first choice as #1. People could only vote once. The survey did not allow multiple votes. They did what I asked - "quality of art" got the most votes. My error in writing the question so that a first choice got the lowest "ranking", it did though get the most votes and I wanted to show a graphic. So basically flip the chart.

  This was the first time I've written a survey. We got lots of things right and really if I hadn't pulled this graph from the statistics I wouldn't even have learned I wrote the question wrong. 

  Now I know to write something like "here are 9 reasons people attend art fairs, rank them from 1 to 9 with 9 being the most important reason."

  For 2014 we'd be pleased to have suggestions and people to vet the survey before it goes out. Two artists did step forward, who had survey writing experience (Allan Teger was one of them) and gave us input.
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  Jim Parker October 28, 2013 at 6:30pm

  A lot of people over on Art Fair Review noticed it, too. And not favorably. That is methodology -- how you gather the data, how you tabulate it, how you present it.

  Your charting procedure is at fault in this case. Instead of summing each of the scores and using that as the data, you could use the formula "count" for each of the ranks, and then chart that. If each person only voted once, that would be an accurate representation. But if each person voted several times, the counts won't reflect ranking, but just popularity.

  To chart for ranking with your current data, you'd need to set up a table where 1=10 points, 2= 9 points and remap your data using the summing formula that gave you the erroneous chart. It's probably easier to do it than it is to try to explain it.
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  Connie Mettler October 28, 2013 at 6:18pm

  It wasn't my methodology, Jim, it was that I had people give a "1" to their favorite category -- so that when it was finally tabulated the one chosen last got the highest score. Am I explaining that correctly? Whereas the favorite should have gotten a 9. I don't know how to change the chart to reflect that. Do you?

  And thanks for noticing ... you're the first to notice, although it troubled me when I saw it!
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  Jim Parker October 28, 2013 at 5:22pm

  Regarding the first chart, Connie, you stated in a footnote that the results were skewed backwards because of your methodology in gathering the data. What would happen if you reversed the data so that the criteria that was ACTUALLY ranked highest had the highest score? What would the chart look like then? I think that some of your readers may miss that critical point when looking at the chart results.

  Please rate the following options as to their importance for you in determining what is a "best art fair." Choose #1 first and then pull down each choice separately and rate it from 1 to 9.*

  *(As this was our initial survey, we asked this question incorrectly. We asked that their #1 choice be the "1", which then gave it the lowest score, rather than the highest. Please look at these results accordingly.)
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  Connie Mettler October 25, 2013 at 3:23pm

  You are welcome, Jon and Judy. It was a labor of love. There are no huge surprises on the list. Pretty much the shows that artists want to be in are where the patrons want to attend. Since I live in Michigan I was particularly heartened by all the votes for the Ann Arbor shows, which many artists say are "over." Maybe so -- but I was there in July, on what turned out to be the hottest day of the summer.  There were plenty of people in attendance. Enough to take care of over 1000 artists? Hard to say on that ...
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  Judy Christian October 25, 2013 at 2:48pm

  Thank you for all of your hard work. Very appreciated!
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  Brenda Helt October 25, 2013 at 1:20pm

  This is wonderful information to have, Connie--thank you!  It confirms much of what artists have said are (or voted as being) the best art fairs.