Three of the largest and most iconic street fairs in San Francisco have formed a new coalition called the SF Street Fair Coalition to foster collaboration and mutual support between the events. The founding partners include San Francisco Pride, Folsom Street, and Castro Street Fair, along with the Bay Area-based nonprofit TurnOut, which has partnered with all three events in the past to provide volunteer management services.
“All four founding organizations have worked closely together for years,” said Jack Beck, Executive Director of the SF Street Fair Coalition and former Executive Director of TurnOut. “Formalizing our partnership will allow us to take this work to the next level. Most importantly, it creates a framework that allows other events to join in and gain the benefits of collaborating at scale.”
“Many street fairs face the same challenges,” said Angel Adeyoha, Executive Director of Folsom Street, the nonprofit that hosts San Francisco’s world-famous leather and kink events Up Your Alley and Folsom Street Fair. “Working together allows us to share resources and information, provide mutual support, and work with the city more effectively.”
The announcement comes on the heels of several new city initiatives to support the production of street fairs in San Francisco. In April, Mayor London Breed announced new legislation to cut fees and streamline permitting to make outdoor events easier to produce. In a statement promoting the legislation, Mayor Breed explained that the goal is to “bring joy and excitement to our streets and revitalize San Francisco.”
Street fairs are not only a core part of San Francisco’s identity, they are also a major driver of the local economy. According to the last economic impact study on outdoor events in San Francisco (published by the SF City Office of Economic Analysis in 2015), these three events combined generated an estimated $545 million in local economic impact in 2014 alone.
“These events are a celebration of people coming together,” said Suzanne Ford, Executive Director of SF Pride. “It’s no surprise that working together has allowed us to do things that would be impossible otherwise. As we continue to build and expand this work, bringing new events into the fold, we have the potential to increase our impact exponentially for our communities and the city we all love.”
https://sfstreetfaircoalition.org/
Published on September 5, 2024
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