Policies and Procedures

The Somers Arts Fair is an important annual fundraising event for Somers Primary School, as well as an exhibition to give artists the opportunity to present and sell their work. The underlying goals of the Arts Fair’s Organising Committee are:

• To maintain a consistently high standard of works;
• To present exhibitors’ works in the best possible light;
• To maximise the potential for exhibiting artists to sell their work;
• To maximise the fundraising potential of the Arts Fair;
• To deliver value to sponsors and supporters;
• To encourage and provide opportunity to local and up-and-coming artists; and
• To exhibit as wide a range of artists as possible.

These are often competing and can be mutually exclusive, so inevitably some challenging compromises will result.

All submissions for acceptance are considered by a selection panel of three to five people. Our policy is:

• Panel members should have an art background and/or experience with previous art shows.
• At least one experienced or professional artist should be a member of the panel.
• Panel members are volunteers and are not remunerated.
• Prize and award judges are not permitted to be on the panel, and cannot view artworks until they are hung or displayed.

Each panel member votes independently for acceptance. All for and against votes are aggregated, and each entry is tentatively accepted/rejected based on a clear majority of votes. 

The selection panel are expected to follow take into account:

• Artistic merit.
• Originality.
• Anticipated likelihood that the work will sell at the Somers Arts Fair. Factors such as whether the artist is selling well elsewhere, has sold at our Arts Fair previously and expected visitor demographic are taken into account.
• Whether the work will enhance and complement the standard of the Arts Fair.

Some artists might not have completed their painting prior to the closing date for entry. It is important to note that lack of a photograph does not in and of itself preclude acceptance. Members of the selection panel have the ability to look at all other works of the entrant in their Gallery 247 portfolio, and can therefore make a value judgement based on previous work, even where the artist is otherwise unknown.

There is a joint review sitting during which all tentatively accepted works are reviewed at a meeting of all selection panel members. Factors that are taken into account at that time include:

• Tentative acceptances that are in breach of Terms and Conditions. Typically these are entries over the maximum number permitted, entries that are too large and the like.
• Where an artist has no acceptances based on the voting process, a tentative rejection might be overridden in order to give that artist an opportunity to exhibit.
• Achieving sufficient diversity of works on display in size, medium, subject matter, genre and price.
• Avoiding a preponderance of a particular subject, size, style and so on, whilst bearing in mind market trends for such works.

It is important that the final acceptances do not exceed the capacity of the venue or compromise the overall presentation of the show. Accordingly, some works might be rejected simply because there’s not enough room.

The Somers Arts Fair is a popular show so it is possible the number of entries will exceed the venue’s capacity. In a perfect world we’d be able to please everybody but unfortunately that’s not the case. It is important that artists do not see rejection as detracting from their work.

For further information, please read refer the Terms and Conditions.

For those artists who are accepted, we wish you every success at the Somers Arts Fair!