By KENDRA SITTON | Uptown News
Ever been in the mood to see a play at Cygnet Theatre on a Friday, visit the Museum of Photographic Arts on a Saturday before heading to a performance by the San Diego Children’s Choir, then go to the San Diego Zoo on Sunday and top it all off with a workshop hosted by the San Diego Watercolor Society? That many events would normally carry a hefty price tag and blow out a budget for a month (if not more). For a lucky winner, all these San Diego events will be free for a year thanks to the “Access2Awesome” giveaway. Nonprofit group Arts+Culture:San Diego has organized a first-of-its-kind contest to give a winner a pair of tickets to dozens of concerts, museums, and performances from more than 50 of its members. In total, the winner will have over 100 tickets.
In addition to the tickets, the grand-prize winner will be given an arts and culture concierge to assist them with year-long arts and culture access.
Arts+Culture:San Diego, through the Community Advisory Council, is raising awareness about the many arts experiences across all of San Diego. With the motto “Everywhere, Every day,” they have been doing public outreach to show the wide array of options in San Diego. The giveaway stemmed from their advocacy.
“We wanted to really celebrate just how amazing [San Diego] is for arts and culture… Literally, we could fill up every day of the year with someone going to an arts and culture experience and they wouldn’t have to repeat stuff,” explained Peter Comiskey, the executive director of Balboa Park Cultural Partnership.
Comiskey helped the arts and cultural centers in Balboa Park form relationships with organizations across the whole region so they could collectively raise awareness about the local art scene.
“The arts and culture community in San Diego is terribly accommodating. Just the fact that we’ve been able to talk to groups as diverse as Outside the Lens [and] Media Arts Center all the way to Old Globe and La Jolla Playhouse, into convincing them that someone should just be able to come to every single show — if they want to go, we’ll get them tickets. To convince them that that’s a great idea just shows how keen everybody is to make Arts+Culture:San Diego [have] this one vibrant, exciting experience,” Comiskey added.
The grand-prize drawing will be on April 9, with 12 weekly prizes leading up to it with smaller batches of tickets.
The inaugural “Access2 Awesome” giveaway is easy to enter online at artsandculturesd.org or by texting SDART to 555-888. Anyone in San Diego County is eligible to enter and there is no need to enter more than once.
— Kendra Sitton can be reached at [email protected].
