Artists, musicians, vendors, and community members filled Fireman’s Park in the Village of DeForest on June 7, marking the 21st anniversary of the event and the first time the fair was organized and hosted by village staff.
Started by Merry Poast and Julie Wills in 2014, the pair created a community tradition and cultivated a loyal following of attendees and returning vendors. Ahead of this year’s event, village staff partnered with University of Wisconsin–Madison graduate students through UniverCity Alliance to consider strategies to boost community engagement, deploy efficient marketing strategies, and streamline vendor management.
“We took over a couple significantly large events this year, with the Dragon Art Fair being one of them,” Recreation and Community Enrichment Director Reese O’Malley said. “There was an interest from the village in understanding, one, the economic impact of those events and then, two, how can we improve those events and what are ways that we can streamline them.”
Through the UniverCity Alliance partnership, DeForest staff connected with four students – Eliana Wasserman, GG Christensen, Sydney Prather, and Sam Weeks – pursuing a master’s degree in arts and creative enterprise leadership through the Bolz Center for Arts Administration.
They worked with O’Malley and Community Events Coordinator Tricia Kleinsteiber over the Spring 2025 semester to connect with community residents in focus groups, lead surveys, and conduct field research. DeForest incorporated several recommendations from the students into the event, including an improved map of the fair grounds and a children’s area that featured interactive art activities like free face painting, spin art bike creations, and rock painting.
“Overall the event went great!” O’Malley said. “I believe the Kids Zone was a big hit and definitely something we would look to bring back. This year we had over 6,000 visitors, which to our numbers is record attendance!”
Over 140 artists came from all over Wisconsin, as well as Illinois and Minnesota to showcase their work. The fair also featured live entertainment, including performances by local musicians Prairie Strummers and Prairie Flowers and a cultural performance by Dhia Ua Ke that Kleinsteiber said brought unique energy and diversity to the event.
Several other recommendations for the Dragon Art Fair like expanding the vendor base, implementing paid advertising and marketing strategies, and using a vendor management software program could be implemented in future years.
O’Malley said this work also aligns with goals outlined in the Village of DeForest’s strategic plan, including streamlining technologies to make the village more efficient and provide better service to the community. Hopefully, the recommendations for the Dragon Art Fair can be transferred to other events, like the community Fourth of July celebration, O’Malley said.
Kleinsteiber said it was beneficial to have the students as an outside entity evaluate the event and offer insight.
“It’s nice having a group that hadn’t even heard of the event before doing this project,” Kleinsteiber said. “They had unbiased opinions because they were learning about the event for the first time.”
UniverCity Alliance Managing Director Megan McBride, who enjoyed the event, said the art fair was lively, well-attended, and a fun way to experience the DeForest community.
“With our UniverCity Alliance partnerships, we want to make sure that local government leaders are receiving practical recommendations that can be implemented all while UW–Madison students receive career-ready experiences,” McBride. “This is exactly what we saw happen with DeForest and the Bolz Center students!”
Throughout the partnership with UniverCity Alliance, DeForest has engaged UW–Madison students on a variety of projects addressing organizational growth, environmental sustainability, and community building.
Practicing the Wisconsin Idea
The Bolz Center’s one-year master’s degree program in arts and creative enterprise leadership trains students to build careers in arts administration or social sector leadership. John Surdyk, director of the Initiative for Studies in Transformational Entrepreneurship, said their goal is to “empower our students to become leaders who can foster community vibrancy through their involvement in arts and community organizations.”
Providing students with on-the-ground learning experiences is critical to accomplishing that mission.
“When our Bolz students step out of our Impact Consulting classroom and into communities across Wisconsin where UniverCity Alliance is working, they get hands-on experience that simply can’t be replicated with traditional readings and instruction,” Surdyk said.
For example, the DeForest project encouraged students to practice community engagement skills and apply marketing, data collection, and event management tools to the project. They also needed to learn how to apply their individual skills to the group project, collaborate, and work efficiently with busy local government professionals.
“This sort of experiential learning and community engagement directly supports the university’s mission and commitment to the Wisconsin Idea, putting the idea into practice,” Surdyk said.
Prather, one of the students working on the project, felt the benefits of getting off campus and connecting her academic work with the surrounding community.
“As UW students, we hear about the Wisconsin Idea through our course work and time on campus, but as current students or alumni, it can be easy to forget that we are now stewards of that idea,” Prather said.
“This becomes clear when we step out of the classroom and into the community,” she continued. “We can steward the resources we are afforded through our education to build a brighter future for Wisconsin and beyond, and I hope students take every opportunity they can to become more deeply involved with the communities around us.”
Prather started her career as a teacher before working in nonprofits, eventually landing with the Madison Children’s Museum. For the project with DeForest, she created and managed surveys, which she was able to directly apply to her current job at the museum. She implemented the survey skills she learned to streamline and improve the museum’s corporate giving policy.
“That was a really exciting moment of taking something that I got in the classroom, getting to try it and see the success through the project, and then being able to adapt and implement that again and again,” Prather said.
Prather said the experience with DeForest allowed their group to connect to the community and to their own abilities. They each discovered how they could apply their skills to the project and where they could continue to grow professionally.
“I knew my time at the Bolz Center and the time spent completing this project was monumental but to see tangible evidence of the work our group had done, see the smiling faces of the DeForest staff, and see a community come together to support artists really encapsulated what all this work has been for,” Prather said about attending the Dragon Art Fair. “It made me excited for other students in the UniverCity Alliance program to see the impact of their work and begin to view themselves as community leaders.”
Save the date for 2026 DeForest Dragon Art Fair on June 6, 2026.
–Abigail Becker