Six Greater Des Moines nonprofits will reach an expanded audience next weekend through a new collaboration with the Des Moines Arts Festival.

This year marks the debut of Arts DSM, a new destination located within the annual Arts Festival, scheduled to take place June 26-28 in Western Gateway Park.  

On the surface, Arts DSM is simple. Among the festival’s regular attractions including visual art displays, live music, and performing and interactive art, festivalgoers will have a chance through Arts DSM to learn more about what arts and culture opportunities are available to them outside the festival and during the remainder of the year.

But the mission of the new destination is more than that. Arts DSM not only furthers the festival’s year-round reach and community outreach mission; the goal is to help provide an additional platform for staff at smaller arts and cultural nonprofits to market the mission, events and offerings of their respective organizations.

“We have a great product, they have a great product,” said Stephen King, executive director of the Arts Festival. “So we asked ourselves what we could do to turn our audience into their ticket buyers. How can we jump-start a great partnership?”

Arts DSM is the result. The location will be situated inside the festival’s perimeter — more specifically, at the intersection of 14th Street and Grand Avenue. Participating nonprofits include the Des Moines Art Center, Des Moines Metro Opera, Ballet Des Moines, Repertory Theatre of Iowa, StageWest and Civic Music Association. Each nonprofit will have a booth.

If there are similar collaborations between arts and culture festivals and nonprofits in Greater Des Moines, King said he is aware of none. Initially, the seed was planted in King when he visited the Plaza Art Fair in Kansas City, an event that has in place a similar collaboration with nonprofits called Arts KC. 

King said he recognized the similarities between the partnership and the Arts Festival’s existing community outreach program, so he brought the idea back to Des Moines and approached Dave Stone, associate director of Bravo Greater Des Moines. Each year, Bravo distributes annual funding to the Arts Festival and other arts and culture events and organizations through a portion of hotel-motel tax allocated by Bravo’s 16 partner communities. 

In addition, Bravo, in the middle of creating a new strategic plan, already was seeking new ways to engage with the Greater Des Moines’ arts and culture community, King said. The following year, Stone accompanied King to Kansas City to see Arts KC for himself. What followed involved a series of conversations between King and Stone and the festival board of directors, Bravo’s board of directors and local arts and culture nonprofits, all of which were used to gauge interest in a possible collaboration. 

“We asked them what they thought. We showed them pictures of the Plaza Art Fair, and most thought it was a great opportunity,” King said. “That’s how it evolved — through our conversations and through meetings we had over the span of two years.”

The idea was a shoo-in for the Arts Festival, King said. The festival already has the dates and the captive audience to deliver to nonprofits interested in expanding their reach — it was just a matter of which nonprofits wanted to take advantage of it. 

“Festivals are funny thing — you ever quite know how the audience will respond, but we really feel like our audience is their audience,” he said. 

Among those participating is Ballet Des Moines. Jody Gifford, the organization’s executive director, said while Ballet Des Moines performs at the festival, the organization never had the chance to interact with art patrons and talk about what it offers.

“For that reason, I was onboard the minute I heard about Arts DSM,” Gifford said. “A presence there puts us in front of an audience that we already know values and appreciates the arts.”

Gifford’s goal in participating in the inaugural Arts DSM is to reconnect with those who already love ballet and to create new audience members at the same time. To get a feel for how organizations will engage with festivalgoers, members of Ballet Des Moines’ staff will be present all three days of the event handing out information about productions and programs, selling season ticket packages, giving out audition information and answering general questions about the nonprofit. In addition to drawings and giveaways, Ballet Des Moines dancers will also perform at the festival.

“I always say people either love ballet or they don’t know about it,” Gifford said, adding Arts DSM will help smaller nonprofits like Ballet Des Moines overcome the challenge of limited marketing resources. “If people don’t know about what we do, they’ll never come to a performance. Something like Arts DSM puts us in front of the right people and gives us a platform to talk about what we do.”

The inaugural collaboration is considered a test, King said. Staff will see if it’s a good fit for both the Arts Festival and the participating nonprofits, all of whom were asked by King to participate. Once the festival concludes, staff will seek feedback from the nonprofits. 

“We will see how this year goes, then we will bring others in and show them the value (of this collaboration),” he said. “Some will find value just getting their brand in front of folks, others will measure in seats sold for performances, and some in other ways, but we will find that out after the festival.”

Still, King said he has a “gut feeling” the number of participating nonprofits will increase next year and in the years that follow.