Cottontown Art Crawl Presented by Prisma Health
A Conversation with Rusty Sox, Chairman
We took some time to talk to one of our clients, Rusty Sox, who serves as the chairman of the Cottontown Art Crawl and a thirty-year resident of the Cottontown neighborhood. We asked him questions about the festival and how billboard advertisement has helped significantly increase the number of attendees.
What is the Cottontown Art Crawl?
It’s a FREE, family- and pet-friendly neighborhood arts festival with food vendors and live music–presented by Prisma Health–that started as a grassroots endeavor by one neighbor.
Organizers invite local and regional artists to set up booths to display their artwork on the Cottontown/Bellevue neighborhood streets, yards and porches (and a few businesses), and invite the public to view and shop for art while taking in the beautiful, historic district’s turn of the century Craftsman-style homes. The festival is a landmark event in the City of Columbia and is celebrating its eighth anniversary this year.
What Kind of Art Will I Find at the Crawl?
Artists are required to bring art that they have personally made. You will find all types of mediums including crochet, jewelry, ceramics, sculpture, photography, painting, fiber, mixed media and even books! There is a diverse offering of art at a wide range of price points, so you are sure to find something that fits your needs. The crawl is a great opportunity for an artist who is just starting to exhibit to put their work in front of a friendly audience.
How Did the Crawl Come About?
The Cottontown Art Crawl was founded in 2019 due to the efforts of one Cottontown neighbor. This resident had a number of friends who were artists and were having trouble showcasing their art, so she picked a date and invited some of those artists to display their work on a few porches in the neighborhood. It was a very small, grassroots start with advertising consisting of only handmade signs stuck in the ground around the neighborhood. But, even with little advertisement, 300 people came, which illustrated that Columbia was primed for such an event. Organizers have welcomed approximately 7,000 people in the past couple of years and expect the same again this year.
Rusty shared with us that once they started growing their budget, he knew he wanted to advertise on billboards. There is a digital billboard on Elmwood, perfectly situated at the front of the Cottontown neighborhood. They started with that board and now are advertising on 10 billboards in the Midlands and 2 out of market in Charleston and Charlotte. Their goal is to attract people to Columbia from outside the city limits to bring more tourism to Columbia and Richland County. During the event, organizers survey attendees by requesting their zip codes, and these surveys show that billboard advertising outside of Columbia works!
Annually, the Cottontown Art Crawl aims to achieve three main points:
- To provide a platform for local artists to show and sell their work
- Showcase the Cottontown neighborhood as a vibrant and creative place to live and an asset to the City of Columbia
- Encourage people to patronize local businesses in the Cottontown/Bellevue neighborhood before, during and after the event
Join us for the 8th Annual Cottontown Art Crawl, presented by Prisma Health, on Saturday, March 7th from 10am-4pm in downtown Columbia’s Cottontown/Bellevue Historic Neighborhood!