Dane Arts Buy Local Market to Transition to Online Workshops, Skill Building Opportunities Amidst COVID-19 Pandemic

April 23, 2020
Ariana Vruwink, 608-267-8823
County Executive

For the past five years, Dane Arts has provided a platform for Dane County visual artists and the greater business community to come together and build partnerships across arenas through its annual Dane Arts Buy Local (DABL) Market. This year, during these challenging times, DABL will turn its focus to helping artists build their art businesses.

As much of our lives have moved to social media during the COVID-19 pandemic, we find artists are doing what they do best—finding creative ways to keep us entertained, creating community art projects, playing living room shows for tips, and helping us find the beauty of community.

To support this effort, DABL will be hosting a combination of live and recorded workshops taught by artists and other professionals. Please contact the DABL team via email (dablmarket@gmail.com) to submit a workshop proposal or suggest a workshop topic.  A full list of workshops will be posted soon on the Dane Arts Facebook and Instagram pages and at www.danearts.com. One can also visit the http://www.dablmarket.com website to find this information.

“Dane County is committed to supporting local artists and providing opportunities for programming during this challenging time,” said County Executive Joe Parisi. “We are excited to provide these workshops and offer local artists the experiences of DABL in an online setting.”

DABL organized business-educational workshops for artists to grow their skills. Previous to these unprecedented circumstances, DABL had re-envisioned itself for 2020 to focus more on providing artists across disciplines skills and training opportunities related to their business and their work.

“With the current realities we now face, and the recent surge of pop-up markets from other entities thanks to DABL, we now feel we can be of an even greater resource for all working artists by offering more practical, personal, and business-oriented programming,” said Mark Fraire, Director of Dane Arts. “We hope this program shift will encourage more artists to participate in DABL so they can better equip themselves with additional skills to sustain their practice.”