Q&A with Nathaniel FitzGerald on 10th Rebel Art Fest
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With just six weeks of planning and a hope to spark something different in South Bend, Rebel Art Fest began in 2016 as an extension of a maker space opened the year prior.
What started as a modest gathering quickly drew an enthusiastic crowd, affirming the need for a space that celebrates underground and unconventional art. Since then, the festival has grown into a staple community event, featuring over 100 vendors.
Inside INdiana Business spoke with Rebel Arts Fest co-founder Nathaniel FitzGerald about what fuels the events’ continued success, the importance of creator communities and the unique opportunity artists can find in South Bend.
This article has been edited for brevity and clarity.
What inspired the inception of Rebel Art Fest in 2016?
My wife, Michelle, and I opened a maker space in 2015, Make South Bend. We had always wanted to do something like a festival, so we actually talked to some friends about helping us organize it in the parking lot behind our building. But they said six weeks was not enough time to pull it off, so we ended up planning it by ourselves. The first one was so great, people just kept showing up out of the blue throughout the day. One of the girls from China House said that this was the first cool thing that’s happened here in years and gave us a big hug. So we decided to keep doing it. One of the people who came to the first edition later got a position in the parks department and invited us to be part of South Bend’s Best Week Ever initiative. So we moved it to the park, which is what we wanted to do in the first place.
We know that there are other art shows in the area but they mostly cater to the typical idea of what an art show is. We wanted to pull from the fringes of the art scene because there are things happening in South Bend that are only happening in South Bend.
Did you have a vision for year 10 when you started?
I’m not sure we had any sort of idea of what that would actually look like. At the time, Artbeat wasn’t even in its 10th year. I’m not sure there was another model that we saw that was a long running thing. So many of these things were upstarts. There were a couple other music festivals that were in their third year when we started. Some of these other festivals aren’t happening anymore, but we’re still here. Best Week Ever started with Rebel Art Fest and ended with River Lights. So Rebel Arts Fest happens in June, Art Beat in August and (y)art in September in the middle of the woods with all these art installations and these crazy stages.
What’s been your favorite thing about the event in the past decade?
To me, it feels like this incredible opportunity to write a love letter to South Bend every year. After I graduated college, I actually moved to Chicago to do music out there. So it’s not that there aren’t talented people in South Bend, it’s just that they leave to join other artistic communities. A few of my friends wanted to dig in and intentionally foster a creative community that’s built on collaboration instead of competition. I liked how it sounded, so I moved back on the strength of that vision. The actual organization folded pretty quickly. But to see where we’ve come in the past 16 years since I moved back, it’s become the town that we wanted to make.
How has South Bend’s creative and civic culture helped make the festival possible?
The level of accessibility is also unmatched. For example, the parks department came to me for a collaboration. If I was living in Chicago, I would have to go through so much red tape to get one pavilion rented. It’s just incredible that both the artistic-minded community and the city government are united in this vision. This is something unique about the city. They say let’s put some energy behind it from a government level and give some resources to events and people who are making these things happen.
FitzGerald speaks about the importance of local government collaboration.
From your personal experience, how financially sustainable has it been to live and create in South Bend?
The biggest boon that I think we have is the economic accessibility in the area. The cost of living has risen in the last few years but it’s still way behind most of the rest of the country. I have a few friends who have left South Bend to pursue music in other communities like Nashville, Austin and Portland that have moved back. They might not be making as much as they were there, but they’re getting maybe as many as opportunities, and what they get is going so much further. When I was in Chicago, everybody was just so focused on paying their bills every month. And when you are trying to collaborate with other artists who are also in this survival mode? There’s just competition. Here, you have more time for the actual community aspect. Things can happen a little more organically because we’re not forced to hustle for everything.
What do you think makes Rebel Art Fest so impactful for vendors and artists?
We bring a buying crowd, and I understand that’s a rare thing as an organizer. It is rare to have a crowd that buys as much as the Rebel crowd does, and I don’t know how we’ve managed to cultivate that. I’m glad we have. I feel very grateful because that’s success for our vendors. We’ve been able to make this thing where other people are succeeding and thriving because of it. I’m very much of the mind that success isn’t a limited resource. We can all thrive together and build this community. Plenty of our artists tell us that it’s their best event of the year, and they do lots of other events. So we just want to keep making this thing that is successful for the people around us.
What’s the most challenging part of putting on an event like this?
Delegating has been the hardest part because it’s our thing. It’s been just the two of us for the last 10 years. This is the first year where we’re outsourcing some of the backdrops. We had our own backdrop that we constructed years ago that had to get reconstructed every year. Now someone else is doing that and I’m wondering why we didn’t do that before. We have so many incredible volunteers that come out. I’m on staff at a church that cancels church that day, and tells everyone to go volunteer at the festival. Another big struggle this year, my mom had a stroke last week and is staying with us until she recovers.
It’s just amazing to see what and who all pulls together to make it happen. It’s our love letter to South Bend but other people want to write that love letter too. All the vendors, artists, musicians, food trucks and volunteers that we have. It’s somewhere around 300 people helping put this on.
How much capital goes into putting on the festival?
So much of it is services that get donated. This is actually the first year that money has changed hands for the rental of the park, and they gave us a great rate. Last year, somebody rented a pavilion for a nice, quiet day at the park and they didn’t tell them that there was an event going on. So this year we figured it would be safer to just rent all the pavilions. But between paying the bands, port-a-potties and other services, it’s probably somewhere around $5,000.
Where do you see this event in the next decade?
Because we’re beholden to the geography of the park, we kind of hit capacity a couple years ago. We’ve got around 115 vendors that we’ve had over the last few years. But each year, the talent pool that we’re drawing from is getting better. There are artists that we have been working with since they were a little scrappy, trying to make a few extra bucks at one of our art markets. Now they are paying their mortgage from what they make at Rebel Art Fest.