Causes have always been on the agenda for sports and entertainment, but few have taken it as far as the 2014 South Carolina State Fair.
Venues Today is about to descend on Columbia, S.C., home of that fair, for the Sport, Entertainment & Venues Tomorrow conference Nov. 19-21. This issue includes a tribute to that Gown and Capital Town, including the fact that the state fair was themed The Pink Fair, all 12 days, last month.
It is not uncommon for fairs to champion causes. Norb Bartosik recalled that when he ran the California State Fair in Sacramento, they built three houses on the fairgrounds for Habitats for Humanity. They, too, were thinking big and had dreams of building a house a day for 18 days, but that was logistically impossible.
Nancy Smith, AGM at the South Carolina State Fair, said Manager Gary Goodman had been wanting to dedicate one state fair to breast cancer awareness for a decade now, but it wasn’t until this year that opportunity knocked. The city’s Walk for Life was scheduled during the fair for the first time, making a tie-in a natural. October is Breast Cancer Awareness month, which also worked.
The fair sponsored the walk, to the tune of $50,000, and the event raised $700,000. That money stayed in Columbia, buying a 3-D mammography machine the local hospitals needed.
Carnival rides and concessions, exhibit halls and entertainers, promotions and sponsors were in on The Pink Fair effort. Participants in the Walk for Life wearing their pink T-shirts were admitted free on walk days. Pay-one-price wristbands were pink this year. Concessionaires wore pink shirts. A mobile mammography van was set up on site. One exhibit hall had a Wall of Hope, with pink love notes to survivors, others in honor of remembered loved ones. By fair’s end, there were 10,000 notes on the wall.
“There was pink all over the place,” Smith said. “It was 12 days of pink.”
The International Association of Fairs & Expositions theme this year is “Seeding Change.” Smith is chair of the program committee. She is certain her fair answered the question: “What are you doing to help seed change?”
Jim Tucker, IAFE executive director, could not recall another fair dedicating its entire run to a cause. The usual theme is agriculture or entertainment related. Last year, IAFE’s theme was “Dream Big” and member fairs raised six million pounds of food for the needy, he noted.
The Royal Easter Show in Sydney, Australia, took seeding change and dream big literally, distributing seeds from oversize pumpkins shown at places like the Topsfield (Mass.) Fair and distributing them to seniors homes so they could watch something big come to life. It takes large pumpkin seeds to grow large pumpkins, and we’re talking large — 800-1,200 pounds.
Big Dreams. Seeding Change. Admirable. So what’s IAFE’s theme for next year? “Have all the fun you want, we’ll make more.” That’s entertainment.
God grant you many years to have fun doing good.