Festival of Glass to reach 50,000 readers!

What's On in Geelong, published today, features a full-page colour advert/editorial about the Festival of Glass.

What's On is a free listings magazine that is distributed across central Victoria and is a prime site for advertising events. Each edition has a print run of 32,000, but each edition is read by at least two people, because it's present in all the Tourism Information centres and in cafes, shops and newsagents. So we're confident that the advert will reach more than 50,000 readers.

The advert (p13) is pictured here; the Festival also appears in the magazine's calendar of the month (p4).

What's On is a sponsor of the Festival of Glass, for which we're very grateful.

Please visit the Festival's web site: https://sites.google.com/site/afestivalofglass/

Festival of Glass becomes a tourist attraction

The Festival of Glass is attracting growing interest from the regional tourist industry, with increasing numbers of 'hits' on Google searches. See: https://sites.google.com/site/afestivalofglass/

Part of the Festival committee's promotional strategy has been to create a significant profile for the Festival among the publications and online sites of the regional tourism industry. The aim has been to make tourism operators in the region aware of the Festival as a new attraction; and, in doing so, to increase the numbers of tourists attending the event and seeing the work of the exhibitors.

The strategy is starting to pay off. The Festival is featured in:
Visit Victoria (premier state tourism website)
The Bellarine Bulletin (monthly regional tourism newsletter)
Only Melbourne (online events magazine)
Geelong-Otway Tourism (premier regional tourism web site)
About Australia (national tourism website)
Australia Shopsafe (national consumer web site)
Planbook Travel (international tourism web site).

The Festival also features, of course, in the web site of our venue, the Potato Shed in Drysdale.

All of those sites can be found in a Google search for 'festivalofglass'. It's nice to see the entries for our Festival of Glass mingling with those for other, well-established glass festivals at Wanganui (NZ), Houston (USA), Blenko (USA) and also the biennial International Festival of Glass at Stourbridge, UK. We've been in touch with the organisers of the Stourbridge festival and their web site is really worth a visit:
www.stourbridge.com/htm/ifg.htm

Festival road-side signs stand out!

Signs for the Festival of Glass are springing-up on roadsides throughout Geelong - well, on quite a few!

The signs feature the Festival logo, plus brief details of the event and the address of the Festival blog site. The colourful logo makes the signs stand out from others around them, most of which are just black-and-white.

The signs are on major roads, including the Portarlington Road (opposite Cheetham Salt), the Ballarat Road (at Kardinia College). One of the signs takes pride of place outside the SpringDale Neighbourhood Centre in High Street, Drysdale.

Please visit the Festival's web site:
https://sites.google.com/site/afestivalofglass/

People on the Bellarine Peninsula may also just have seen one of our smaller signs on a certain trailer ...

Online gallery now open

The latest feature on the Festival of Glass web site is a gallery of some of the glass products that will be on display on the day - February 20 2011.

The gallery includes glass sculpture, pendants, dishes, bracelets and decorative pieces and much more. A visit to the gallery will give you just a taste of the delights in store on the day and indicates the extraordinary diversity of artifacts brought together under the 'glass' banner.

It's worth dropping-in to the gallery more than once, because as new exhibitors sign up to the Festival, examples of their work will be added to the gallery.

The web site address is as follows:
https://sites.google.com/site/afestivalofglass/

You can also access the web site by Googling 'afestivalofglass', because already the site is now generating enough traffic for Google to prioritise it in its searches.

The Festival's 'Old Glass Roadshow'

Have you ever watched The Antiques Roadshow on television and wondered about the value of that old vase or bottle or lampshade that you're keeping 'just in case'?

Now you can find out. When you visit the Festival of Glass, bring your treasured glass object with you and look out for the Old Glass Roadshow. There, two specialist collectors will give you their view on its value.

Of course, no-one can guarantee that a particular glass object will fetch a particular price. After all, something's only worth what someone will pay for it. But its nice to have an idea - is the value of your piece just sentimental ... or just under a thousand?!

Whatever the specialists' view, wander from the Roadshow to the Geelong Bottle and Collectables Club stall. There you can see a range of historic glass bottles, including some from the old water-bottling plant in nearby Jetty Road. These bottles had a distinctive, torpedo-like shape and were used in the early 20th century to bottle the spring water from Clifton Springs.
Festival of Glass: https://sites.google.com/site/afestivalofglass/

Be creative around glass - without breaking anything!

The Festival of Glass will feature three competitions where you, too, can be creative around the wonderful world of glass without putting yourself in danger!

1. Best glass-related photograph or painting A painting about glass might seem an odd idea, but several paintings by surrealist painter René Magritte feature windows (see, e.g., www.mattesonart.com/part-2-magrittes-window-paintings.aspx) and one of his paintings is called 'The Glass Key' (but, in surrealist fashion, it contains neither glass or key).

2. Best glass-related story, poem or song This may not be as hard as it seems. After all, the story of Cinderella focussed on a glass slipper. There's a newsblog called 'Glass; a journal of poetry' (http://glass-poetry.blogspot.com/). Who can forget John Lennon's song, 'Glass Onion', Blondie's 'Heart of Glass' or Bowie's 'Breaking Glass'?

3. Best glass jewellery Several makers of glass jewellery will be exhibiting their work at the Festival, so it would be tactless to suggest others' work as inspiration here! as the Festival's web site develop, it will feature examples of exhibitors' pieces; and already, the web site has links to our exhibitors' own web sites, where you can browse for inspiration.

In each competition, the winning entry will be the people's choice - the one receiving the most voters from visitors. So get your entry in early to ensure that everyone has a chance to vote or it!

Submitting your entry
On the day of the Festival (20 February 2011), please hand-in your entry at the Festival's Information desk. Please ensure that it is accompanied by your contact details, so that we can tell if you won! You can retrieve your entry immediately after the winners are announced.
Festival of Glass: https://sites.google.com/site/afestivalofglass/

Festival web site goes live!

The Festival of Glass web site has gone 'live'. To the sound of cheers and popping corks, DCSCA President Doug Carson pulled a large blue lever on the side of his computer, which then displayed the message, 'FoG web site live' and paid out $2.50 in plastic tokens.

But seriously ... the Festival's web site brings together in one place all the information that exhibitors and visitors need. This includes:

• information about the Festival site - Drysdale's Potato Shed - and how to get there
• an outline of the day's program (which is updated regularly)
• a presentation on the Festival's sponsors
• information about each exhibitor, photos of some of their work and a link to their web site

The web site address is as follows:
https://sites.google.com/site/afestivalofglass/

At this early stage. you'll need to type the address into your browser window, rather than into a search engine (e.g. Google). As traffic to the site starts to build, search engines will start to recognise it and it will be accessible through search engines.

Tourism operators learn about the Festival of Glass

Monthly tourism newsletter 'The Bellarine Bulletin' is currently promoting the Festival of Glass to local tourism businesses as a new attraction for tourists and holiday-makers in the region.

The newsletter is published by Bellarine Tourism, which both represents and supports the region's tourism industry. Each edition of the newsletter goes to the wide range of businesses involved in tourism, from accommodation to zoos. The inclusion of the Festival of Glass means that it will be promoted directly by word of mouth from tourism businesses to their customers. The Festival's organisers are grateful to Bellarine Tourism for its support.

'Only Melbourne' features the Festival of Glass

The Festival of Glass is featured in the weekly online newsletter Only Melbourne (www.onlymelbourne.com.au).

Only Melbourne started in 1998 and is a good resource for residents of Melbourne - and visitors, too. The newsletter includes a range of guides to Melbourne, including 'What's On Melbourne', a 'Business and Services Directory' and the 'Melbourne City Guide'.

We hope that the Festival's inclusion will encourage Melbournites to have a day out in Drydsdale. Once they've visited the Festival of Glass, Melbournites can also visiting the nearby community market and ride back in time on the Bellarine steam railway from Drysdale to Queenscliff.

Here is a direct link to the Festival's page in the newsletter:
www.onlymelbourne.com.au/melbourne_details.php?id=28656