Our Best Art Fair Awards survey process began in October. The survey was shared on our websites, in our email newsletters (to nearly 60,000 subscribers) and Facebook pages. Some art fairs shared the survey with their mailing lists and put it on their Facebook pages, dramatically increasing the number of votes they received.

Participation was high with close to 1,000 nominations received online. We received hundreds of nominations for shows throughout the country and completed surveys from nearly 2000 voters.

Voting was particularly high throughout the Midwest and across the South.

Some of the survey questions:

(If you'd like more details from our Survey to improve your Art Fair, email connie @ artfaircalendar.com for copies and art fair consulting services.)

Please choose up to five of your favorite art fairs and craft shows.
Which art fair is the best in the country?
How do you determine what is a best art fair? There were 8 choices, as you can see the respondents overwhelmingly chose "quality of art" as the determiner.
What is the best Northeast show? See the best five here.
What is the best Midwest show? See the best five here.
What is the best Southern show? See the best five here.
What is the best Western show? See the best five here.
What is the best big city show? (view results here)
What smaller show is the most fun and your favorite? (view results here)
Why do you attend art and craft fairs? Rate the following from "best reason" to "least likely."
How do you find out about art fairs and craft shows?
(Note: This is useful information when considering marketing, as we always knew, "word of mouth" is still the best way to get the word out, and yet all marketing seems to be helpful. This is not very helpful if you are hoping to save some money by reallocating funds.)
Do you buy art? How often?
What shows do you no longer attend and why? We received 142 responses with reasons such as "the quality is no longer there and it's impossible to park," "Too crowded and lots of junk- not considered "art"," "too large not easy to get around."
Over the last five years how many art fairs have you attended?
How far have you traveled to attend an art fair?
Do you have any suggestions for art festival organizers on how to improve their events?
Help us understand who you are:
Average age: 59.27
Gender: 72.3% Female; 27.7% Male
Education level completed:
high school - 5%; some college - 7 %; college - 42%; post grad, PhD, Law, Masters, etc. - 46%
Income level: $127,843 - average
Other: "middle income", "well paid", "retired", "high", "good enough", "not enough", "unemployed", "not as high as I would like", "very comfortable", "LOTS", "above average", "mucho"

We have detailed answers to all those questions and many more such as:

Do you buy art and where?
How do you find out about art fairs?
Who are your favorite artists?
Do you have any suggestions for art festival organizers on how to improve their events?
What is your favorite art fair website?

We had several thousand replies to this 7th annual survey.

Amazingly, 87.5% of the respondents completed the entire survey and followed all the prompts! No "cat herding" necessary.

Many thanks to everyone who took the Best Art Fair Awards survey.

We have gathered a lot of helpful information about the art fair business that we can share with your art fair.

Want to put these findings to work to improve your art event?

Connie Mettler, the Publisher of ArtFairCalendar.com and this Best Art Fairs survey, has much more art fair industry expertise to help improve your art fair. Email her about art fair consulting services at connie (at) artfaircalendar.com.