Original Photo by Missouri Division of Tourism — Some Rights Reserved

Have a festival? Want to have vendors? A new partner has signed up to make running a festival easier.

Our Festival Transaction Services, Inc. (FTS) has signed a two-year agreement with Cultural Festivals of St. Louis, MO. Cultural Festivals produces and promotes Saint Louis Art Fair, which attracts 150,000 visitors annually.

The Fair initially will implement the FTS vendor booth sales service using the FTS web site, www.festbiz.com. Saint Louis Art Fair, an award-winning fine arts and performing arts festival, is a growing influence among art festivals, and considered by artists as one of the best.

Cindy Lerick, President and Executive Director, said, “FTS represents an opportunity for Saint Louis Art Fair to begin deploying new cash management tools that save us time, improve our business intelligence and reduce our cash risks. We will start with the FTS automated vendor booth sales service and extend into the other services as we gain experience and learn how to take advantage of them.”

Charles Brown, CEO of FTS, said, “We are very pleased to be working with Saint Louis Art Fair. Cindy Lerick and her staff create and manage one of the most prominent juried art festivals in the U.S. It is an important cultural event with more than 180 artists, 15 restaurants and 150,000 attendees. Our goal is to help them generate material double-digit improvements in their financial results over the next five years.”

FTS has partnerships both with Visa and with BankAmerica Merchant Services, which have allowed FTS to use its technology leadership to provide unique services and reporting to event organizers and managers. Brown said, “FTS technology allows each transaction device to be identified by location and type of sale, providing new and valuable information to FTS fair and festival customers. All event and vendor sales transactions can be viewed online within the event’s private account, providing secure and immediate sales results in near real time.”

About Cultural Festivals

Cultural Festivals is a non-profit cultural organization, specializing in cultural special events that educate and entertain. Cultural Festivals employs over 1,000 volunteers in a wide variety of leadership roles. Our organization’s goal is to enrich the community by bringing together people of all backgrounds to celebrate and share arts experiences. Our audiences give testament to the need for this coming together in an urban environment.

About FTS

FTS offers transaction services to the fair and festival community including card processing, ticketing, promotion and sponsorship sales support for events, promotion and processing for performers and vendors and Festivals.com VIP prepaid cards for attendees. FTS also operates Festivals.com and KadmusArts.com, the largest Internet resources for information on festivals, fairs and events, with more than 40,000 events in 150 countries.

Original Photo by George Thomas — Some Rights Reserved

Looking for an easy way to set up festival vendors?

FTS can help you organize, price and contract with different kinds of vendors to maximize booth sales and serve your festival goers.

Here’s the latest news on this service:

Festival Transaction Services (FTS) has signed a two-year agreement with the 500 Festival in Indianapolis, to implement the FTS vendor booth sales service using the FTS web site, www.festbiz.com.

The 500 Festival, one of the most prestigious community events in the U.S., adds a month-long festival leading up to the Indianapolis 500® on Memorial Day weekend featuring multiple events, from the nation’s largest half-marathon to the one of our country’s most prestigious parades.

Terry Powers, Vice President, Operations for 500 Festival, said, “FTS has very appealing technology developed specifically for the festivals and events business. They are integrating card processing, ticketing, payment and promotion in ways that we believe can help grow our revenue and reduce our operating costs. They also offer their services on a flexible a la carte basis so we can scale up to a fully integrated system as we gain experience. FTS has also demonstrated a deep commitment to our industry, which is critical to our success.”

Charles Brown, CEO of FTS, said, “We are very pleased to have 500 Festival as a customer. Terry Powers and the staff and volunteers of 500 Festival are well known as leaders in the festivals and events marketplace, and in the International Festivals & Events Association. We will start by getting to know their operations so we can help them assimilate our services to grow revenue, reduce expenses and get closer to their attendees.”

FTS has partnerships both with Visa and with BankAmerica Merchant Services, which have allowed FTS to use its technology leadership to provide unique services and reporting to event organizers and managers. Brown said, “FTS technology allows each transaction device to be identified by location and type of sale, providing new and valuable information to FTS fair and festival customers. All event and vendor sales transactions can be viewed online within the events private account providing new visibility for our customer’s sales results.”

About 500 Festival

The 500 Festival is a self-funded, not-for-profit organization deriving its revenue streams from ticket sales, event registrations, sponsorship and corporate memberships. Hundreds of local, regional and national companies participate in a variety of ways. And it works. As one of the nation’s largest festivals, 500 Festival events draw both exposure and people. Families from across the globe attend the IPL 500 Festival Parade, which is nationally-televised on NBC Sports Network. The Parade is one of the nation’s three largest, along the likes of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and Pasadena Tournament of Roses. One of only a few nationally televised parades, it attracts an estimated 300,000 curbside spectators — locals and tourists alike.

About FTS

FTS offers transaction services to the fair and festival community including card processing, ticketing, promotion and sponsorship sales support for events, promotion and processing for performers and vendors and Festivals.com VIP prepaid cards for attendees. FTS also operates Festivals.com and KadmusArts.com, the largest Internet resources for information on festivals, fairs and events, with more than 40,000 events in 150 countries.

Festival Transaction Services, Inc. (FTS) has announced that it has signed a two-year agreement to implement the FTS cash management services program for BorderFest, in Hidalgo, Texas. BorderFest, celebrating its 37th year in 2013, attracted more than 85,000 visitors in 2012, and increased attendance to 91,117 in 2013.

Hidalgo City Manager and BorderFest CEO Joe Vera said, “We tested the FTS processing service at our month-long Festival of Lights in December. Their devices performed well, and we expanded their service for BorderFest to include entry box office, food and beverage tickets and our souvenir merchandise. Next year, we look forward to adding their Festivals.com prepaid Visa® cards-as-tickets services.”

Charles Brown, CEO of FTS, said, “We are honored to have BorderFest as a partner in the FTS program. Under Joe Vera’s leadership, BorderFest is one of the best run and most respected events in the festivals and events business. They excel at delivering value to their sponsors as well as their visitors and we are looking forward to helping them offer new sponsor opportunities in 2014 through our prepaid Visa cards-as-tickets. As Past Chairman of the IFEA Foundation Board [International Festivals & Events Association] and Immediate Past President of the Texas Association of Fairs and Events [TAFE], Joe’s acceptance of FTS is particularly significant for our service and technology.”

Kay Wolf, assistant city manager, who also manages the city’s December Festival of Lights event, said, “The larger crowds of BorderFest were no problem for the FTS devices and service. The addition of cell phone signal boosters that FTS supplied made a huge difference.”

Brown added, “FTS deployed 32 wireless transaction devices at 8 box office, food coupon and merchandise sales locations on the BorderFest site. BorderFest volunteers had no problem using the devices, and FTS processed all major credit and debit cards for event visitors’ purchases.”

FTS has partnerships both with Visa and with BankAmerica Merchant Services, which have allowed FTS to use its technology leadership to provide unique services and reporting to event organizers and managers. Brown said, “FTS technology allows each transaction device to be identified by location and type of sale, providing new and valuable information to FTS fair and festival customers. All event and vendor sales transactions can be viewed online within the events private account providing new visibility for our customer’s sales results.”

About Hidalgo BorderFest
    Hidalgo BorderFest was first held in 1976, and 500 visitors attended the event. This is its 37th year, and attendance was 91,117. BorderFest is produced by the City of Hidalgo, Texas. Joe Vera, City Manager, and Kay Wolf, Deputy City Manager act as event producers for BorderFest, Festival of Lights and other City events. Hidalgo is a city of 11,800 on the Rio Grande, directly across from Reynosa, Mexico. BorderFest has been a significant contributor to Hidalgo city activities, and today attracts visitors from throughout the Rio Grande Valley.

About Festival Transaction Services, Inc. (FTS)
    FTS offers transaction services to the fair and festival community including card processing, ticketing, promotion and sponsorship sales support for events, promotion and processing for performers and vendors and Festivals.com VIP prepaid cards for attendees. FTS also operates Festivals.com and KadmusArts.com, the largest Internet resources for information on festivals, fairs and events, with more than 40,000 events in 150 countries.

We have great news for the KadmusArts community of festival producers and promoters, artists and bands, audiences and fans.

Festival Transaction Services Inc., (FTS) a leading financial services company for the festival and fair market, has acquired KadmusArts.

From our home base in Vermont, we have grown tremendously thanks to you, our users in 155 countries. Now KadmusArts will be able to build on these accomplishments and develop new services and opportunities for all of you who connect, exchange ideas, and discover new work through KadmusArts.com.

FTS offers financial transactions services to festivals and fairs including card processing, ticketing, promotion and sponsorship sales support for events, promotion and processing for performers and vendors, and an innovative prepaid card program to serve events, attendees and performers. FTS has strategic partnerships with Visa Corporation and Bank of America Merchant Services, Inc. (BAMS) to provide credit and debit card services to community events. FTS is a unique service in the events marketplace (Festbiz.com).

FTS also operates Festivals.com and FestivalFinder.com, creating the largest online resource for information on community festivals, fairs and events, with more than 50,000 events in 100-plus countries classified by Arts, Children, Culture, Motorsports, Music and Sports. In combination with KadmusArts.com, we will now be able to ensure that festivals, artists, and audiences have the most comprehensive content and discovery engine on the web.

Over the next couple of months, you will begin to see the suite of new services and opportunities on KadmusArts.com and through all of FTS’ online platforms.

In the meantime, another amazing festival season has begun. Every day, KadmusArts brings you global entertainment news stories, free and discounted festival ticket offers, up-to-the-minute Twitter feeds from festivals, podcast interviews with festival artists and producers, weekly feature stories on festivals and artists, blogs on international arts/culture trends and festival food, themed playlists, and a forum for job postings, special events, workshops, and travel opportunities.

All of us at KadmusArts are thrilled that we will continue to help you travel, discover, and create!

- Bill Reichblum

To celebrate the New Year and inspire your 2013 travels, KadmusArts brings together some of the best images from last year’s festivals. All of the photos come from KadmusArts’ users: festival producers, promoters, artists, bands, audiences and fans from all over the world.

The Festival Year in Review soundtrack, Chal Diye, is created by Zeb and Haniya. From their home base in Lahore, Pakistan, Zeb and Haniya write amazing original songs, perform in Turkish, Dari and Pushto, and bring a fresh sensibility to songs and melodies from Afghanistan, India, and Pakistan. Their performances transcend borders and transport audiences. Isn’t that what festivals are all about?

This is why we do what we do at KadmusArts: to help you travel, discover, and create.

From all of us at KadmusArts,
Happy New Year!
May you have a festival-filled 2013!

Original Photo by martinak15 — Some Rights Reserved

As we come to the end of the year, take a moment with all of us at KadmusArts to remember the world’s significant artists, producers, and creative leaders who passed away in 2012. Their work inspired, entertained, and enlightened us. Their legacy is our common cultural heritage.

This time of year, many of us are inundated with solicitation letters from not-for-profits for good works and causes. Here’s one, though, that caught our attention. This one came from one of the world’s great theatre companies and festivals, Dell’Arte International of Blue Lake, California.

The letter, from Dell’Arte’s producing artistic director Michael Fields, wonderfully captures a genuine passion for their work, demonstrates a vital connection to a community, gives a reason to smile and, oh, yeah, reminds us that amazing artists create great work.

If you’re looking for an inspiration to be generous, meet Dell’Arte:

Dear Friends of Dell’Arte,

As I write this annual appeal for Dell’Arte, I am also writing a TEDx talk on the nature of laughter and its relationship to the health of a place and a community. So one cannot help but influence the other. And in the course of research I found this. It was recently voted the funniest joke in Denmark where I often travel and work.

An Alsatian dog went to a telegram office, took out a blank form and wrote, “Woof. Woof. Woof. Woof. Woof. Woof. Woof. Woof. Woof.” The clerk examined the paper and politely told the dog: “There are only nine words here. You could send another ‘Woof’ for the same price.” “But,” the dog replied, “that would make no sense at all.”

I don’t exactly know why I laugh, but I do. And somewhere along the way, I understand much more about Denmark. This is what we aspire to do in a very deep way at Dell’Arte. We seek to engage the human comedy, which reveals the foibles of us all. We train theatre makers and make theatre that acknowledges that life is 51% comedy and 49% tragedy. And we do this with a poetic ferocity that strives to lift it from the banal into the profound and truly engage the communities we work for and with. In this era of increasing dogmatic rigidity and seriously divisive dialogue, I often think of the words of that old PBS radical, Mr. Rogers, who said, “We live in a world in which we need to share responsibility. It is easy to say, It is not my child, not my community, not my world, not my problem. Then there are those who see the need and respond. I consider those people my heroes.”

In many respects you are our heroes and heroines. We cannot exist without you. That is the essential nature of who we are and what we believe in. Making theatre always needs at least two to tango. It’s a relationship, not a commodity. And here we are at the beginning of a new season. We need your help. It has been your generosity and enthusiasm that has made these past 42 years possible. And we hope that you will continue to help support the work of Dell’Arte into the future.

Help us take the holiday show THE FISH IN MY HEAD to over 7,000 people and families all over this region for free at the holidays and collect thousands of pounds of food that is given to food banks to distribute during the holiday season. Help us make the 2013 Mad River Festival, this year featuring Dell’Arte doing Shakespeare (different I promise you), and honoring co-founder Jane Hill with a Lifetime Achievement award. Help us take our work throughout this place and beyond via our touring, rural residencies, and community based projects like EXIT 101.

This work is real. It matters. It brings together that rare convergence of amazing work, a great community, and the real possibility to shape the future. We wish you and yours a great holiday season and peace in the new year. We thank you for your support. And as Charlie Chaplin said, “A day without laughter is a day wasted.”

All the best from all of us at Dell’Arte.

Michael Fields, Producing Artistic Director

Isn’t that great?

Don’t waste your day: Here’s how to Donate Online, or you can send a tax-deductible donation by mail: Dell’Arte International, PO Box 816, Blue Lake, CA 95525.

- Bill Reichblum

Original Photo by kris krüg — Some Rights Reserved

Have a great picture from a festival this year?

Each year to celebrate the New Year, KadmusArts creates a video feature of the best festival photographs submitted by our users — festival presenters and promoters, artists and bands, audiences and fans from around the world. 

Take a look at last year’s Festival Year in Review, with a soundtrack from the amazing Blitz the Ambassador.

Photographs should be at least 1024×768 in size or 1 megapixel. Please include all relevant festival information so that we can properly credit the event and the photographer. Of course, if you have any questions about formatting or the feature, please don’t hesitate to let us know. You can submit up to 3 photos to be considered in our selection process. So, choose your best!

The deadline is December 6, 2012, 4:00pm EST.  

Thank you for sharing your travels, your discoveries, and your creations and helping to spread Festival Love!

– Bill Reichblum

Original Photo by tup wanders — Some Rights Reserved

Science now proves what every Casanova knows – a little music helps.

In a study commissioned by Spotify, a scientist has discovered a link between specific songs and successful seductions. Dr. Daniel Müllensiefen, who teaches “Music, Mind and Brain” in the psychology department at Goldsmiths, University of London, analyzed the responses of 2,000 participants to find both the music-to-sex connection and also which songs are the best aphrodisiacs.

Dr. Müllensiefen already knew that music activates pleasures center in the brain. He was curious what music produces the best results. “People use this music to not only communicate their intentions in a romantic situation but to directly alter the mood during an encounter,” according to the good doctor.

Apparently different songs can create different opportunities. Marvin Gaye’s “Let’s Get It On” and “Sexual Healing” are best for creating a romantic mood. Abba’s “Dancing Queen” is best for flirting while dancing. And for consummating all that music and mood preparation? Any song from the movie soundtrack “Dirty Dancing” is the favorite. (Wow. Who were those 2,000 participants?)

Another significant finding from Müllensiefen’s study: one in three of the participants reported that Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” is a song that is “better than sex.” (Good to know their music choices are better than their movie choices.)

For couples-to-be around the world Dr. Müllensiefen gives the ultimate guide:

Top 10 Get In the Mood Songs
1. Marvin Gaye – Sexual Healing
2. Marvin Gaye – Let’s Get It On
3. Barry White – Anything by the artist
4. Serge Gainsbourg – Je T’aime
5. Kings of Leon – Sex on Fire
6. Hot Chocolate – You Sexy Thing
7. Ravel – Bolero
8. Boyz To Men – I’ll Make Love To You
9. Chris De Burgh – Lady in Red
10. R Kelly – Bump & Grind

Top 10 Songs To Play During Couples’ Play
1. Dirty Dancing – any music from the soundtrack
2. Marvin Gaye – Sexual Healing
3. Ravel – Bolero
4. Berlin – Take My Breath Away
5. Barry White – Anything by the artist
6. Marvin Gaye – Let’s Get It On
7. Righteous Brothers – Unchained Melody
8. Celine Dion – Titanic Soundtrack / My Heart Will Go On
9. Serge Gainsbourg – Je T’aime
10. Whitney Houston – I Will Always Love you

- Bill Reichblum

KadmusArt received a message from one of the world’s great festival leaders, Mali’s Manny Ansar. Manny, who is the director of the Festival au Désert – Essakane, has had to leave his country because of the political situation in Mali.

Last year, KadmusArts interviewed Manny about the global reach of the festival and its resonance with our deepest traditions of gathering, exchanging our stories, and journeying to discover something new in ourselves and in our world.

Now, Manny hopes his forced travels will create a new movement…

Dear Friends,

Manny Ansar
Directeur Général du Festival au Désert — http://www.festival-au-desert.org/

On behalf of everyone at KadmusArts and in the global festival community, please do help get the word out on Manny’s plans — and dreams. And, of course, if you have any ideas or offers to help Manny and his team create the Festival-in-Exile, do let us know!

- Bill Reichblum