Top 8 Street Fair Event Layout Planning Tips
A good street fair layout will take advantage of significant locations already within your area. Select spaces for activities by looking for positive characteristics that make people want to be there. For example, a children’s area is good next to grassy spot. Shady spots invite seating. When designing your layout, carefully consider placement of entertainment stages or dynamic interactive activities because they are major attractions.
Sometimes it’s advantageous to draw people to the ends of your event to bring attention to sponsors and participating stakeholders. Corners that have 4 participating businesses are special places, known as 100% corners. Make something happen there. People naturally want to check out historical or beautiful buildings. Those with generous overhanging awnings shelter audiences, as do those with large inset entryways.
These are the top 10 layout considerations for an outdoor event or Street Fair.
Open Space/Rest Stops
Rest stops are much appreciated anywhere, especially near children’s areas. Rent benches, hay bales, or set chairs in groups to make comfortable places for visitors to take a break. Also, set up seating in protected corners, at bus stops and entrance areas for people waiting for rides.Food vendor areas are natural spaces to place rest stops. Use simple pop-up tents with tables and chairs underneath to offer a place to eat and rest.Note businesses that offer a comfortable indoor place from the heat outside.Keep intersections open, they are natural places for people to congregate. Leave a 15’ lane for emergency access.
Performance Stages
Stages need to be set up in prominent locations facing in, or towards the center of your Fair.
Electricity will be required either from a generator, power source, nearby business or home.
A loss of power occurs with too many electrical cords so keep the distance short whenever possible.
The stage’s backside needs to have vehicle access so musicians and equipment can be loaded and unloaded easily.
Save parking spaces nearby for performers.
Set sound booths, usually under a 10’ x 10’ canopy, off center, in front of the stage, near a corner that has access to electricity.
Adjust the volume when using small sound systems in order to make an impact in a large outside area.
Dancers, magicians, jugglers or awards presentations can take place in front of stages in between acts while bands change or set breaks.
Set a microphone at street level, in front of the stage, to make announcements.
Leave an open space for dancers or viewers immediately in front of the stage for the public to dance, or for viewers who just want to watch. Depending on the size of the fair, this area could be 10 feet or much larger.
Beyond the open space, provide a few rows of chairs for people who are unable to stand up for long periods of time, but may want to hear the music.
Street Vendors
Vendor booths grouped or strung in a line connect large open spaces. In narrow spaces, string along a sequence of booths, interspersed with busker entertainment to create fun experiences and draw people along.
Set up sponsors’ and vendor’s booths on cross streets in courtyards, facing your main street.
Leave room for people to shop. An alley for shoppers should be at least 4-persons wide.
Food vendors often do well when grouped together. The food area will always be a draw.
Try not to place in narrow lanes because lines will block pedestrian flow.
Parking lots don’t have good natural characteristics.
When staging activities there, add colorful tents and group vendors to add lanes that break up empty spaces.
Kid’s Play Areas
Set children’s play areas away from potential contact with vehicles that are still moving on nearby streets.
Set apart from loud activities or music stages.
Add shade tents for waiting parents. In hot weather, add sprinklers, water wands or cooling pools nearby.
This is a great area to add one or two rest stops with straw bales, benches or picnic blankets.
Bounce Houses - Locate them near a busy street because they are a draw simply due to their size. Allow space for potential lines that may form at pony rides or bounce houses Locate Petting Zoos near shade or provide shade and on grass, if possible.
Animals require breaks and often are “open for business” only for a few hours during the fair.
Empty lots surrounded by trees are good places for petting zoos and horse rides, providing nature in an urban setting.
Set up skateboard areas, soapbox races, tricycle obstacle courses or remote racecar tracks in adjacent parking lots or nearby parks when possible.
Leave space for teens to hang out on the fringes, they love to be anywhere away from parents.
Bikes or any wheeled activities should be at the bottom of a hill, if there are slopes in your area.
Similarly, water features need to be at the lowest level so possible overflow won’t cause a hazard.
Beer & Wine Garden
Beverage gardens require large spaces, preferably near a large, or main, stage. Set them in prominent, well-lit locations where the whole perimeter can be seen.
Add at least one food vendor close by. The backside of drink areas should have vehicle access so that ice or beer can be easily resupplied.
Have refrigerated trucks or a good hand-truck to deliver beer kegs that can weigh 160 pounds. Refrigerated trucks with internal generators can be just as loud as portable generators so make sure they are behind and away from stages.
Serving alcohol usually requires setting up a controlled area. Colorful fencing or flagging works well. Follow liquor authority rules.
Indicate rules with good signs at these locations: Entrance, Exit(s), Token Sales and Serving Area (Bar).
Have only one entrance, staffed with smiling volunteers who check identification (ID) so that only adults enter the area.
Other volunteers can monitor separate exits.
Stamp hands so people can come and go and have their IDs checked only once.
Sell tickets, or tokens for drinks, separate from the bar. A good place is just inside the entrance.
Passages (Connector Spaces)
Art on walls or fences beautifies and links spaces.
Community information booths, provided free of charge to non-profit vendors, offer games, contests or raffles that engage walkers.
Use musical entertainment buskers to draw people into dead-end or low traffic areas.
They can enliven a corner and help direct people flow with flags or balloons.
Make sure buskers are far enough away from stages so that sound won’t overlap.
Parking
Many commercial center public streets are 30’ to 60’ wide. This includes parking lanes that are generally 8’ wide. One of the hardest questions to decide is: to tow or not to tow.
If the whole street is going to be used, plan to spend time letting your community know there will be ‘No Parking’, in advance
.Setting out No Parking signs doesn’t guarantee that cars won’t be there when you arrive to start setting up on Fair day.
Arrange for a tow truck to be available early morning on event day, to provide “courtesy tows” where vehicles are towed to the nearest free space.
Direct street vendors and volunteers where to park, preferably in a partner school, church or business’s parking lot designated for that use.
As a fair grows, parking will become a problem. Encourage people to ride bikes or bus to your fair.
Rent bike racks or low fencing that can be used for locking bikes.
Be creative and build temporary stands. A bike check area can easily be set up and monitored by a community group as a fundraiser.
A volunteer managed parking lot can raise funds for community groups too.
Sanitation
Rented portable toilets are common at Street Fairs and outdoor events.
Plan to distribute toilets in several locations or group centrally in an area easily accessible from more than one direction.
Set toilet doors so that they open away from main traffic flows.
For larger fairs, set rental toilets in groups, separated for women and men, around hand washing sinks.
Garbage and recycling cans should be set up on every corner.
Group several units together in food areas.
Locate a large garbage dumpster nearby to hold filled garbage bags.
For for more ways to level up your event, read the comprehensive event planning guidebook by seasoned neighborhood business consultant, Bridget Bayer:
Street Fairs for Community and Profit:
How To Plan, Organize and Stage a Sensational Street Fair While Building Community
It’s a nuts-and-bolts book that will especially help new groups in planning—and actually executing—a street fair. For experienced organizers, it will help them PROFIT from their event. www.streetfairguide.com