(KCPW News) Growing costs have prompted the Salt Lake City Arts Council to seek text message donations to help pay for the annual Twilight Concert Series, which kicks off next week. Up to now, the 24-year-old free concert series has been made possible through grants, sponsorships and money from Salt Lake City coffers. However, Twilight Concert Series Director Casey Jarman says bands are getting more expensive, the move to pioneer park is more than double the cost of the Gallivan Center, and more security is needed to oversee the larger crowds. So they’ve got to get more creative.
“People make individual donations, send us a check. Those types of things and we just thought, you know, The budgets are always tight. Any money that comes in generally goes mostly for artists fees, that’s the biggest bite,” says Jarman. “And so if people want to get involved they can make a simple text donation. It’s a very easy thing. And it’s a maximum of five dollars. You can’t give more than that.”
Jarman says the event cost $10,000 when it began at the Salt lake City Arts Center, and has jumped to about $700,000 this year. And he says it’s not going to slow down anytime soon.
“The more income we generate, the more sponsors we have, the more we’re able to present better artists and that’s the nature of it that we hope will continue. We have some room to still grow at pioneer Park. We’re not at capacity there. We can do a lot more things there. And I think the future is very bright as long as we can keep these revenue streams alive,” says Jarman.
Jarman says they are looking for volunteers to greet concertgoers, serve drinks and perform other tasks. If you would like to donate, send a text message that says TWILIGHT to 20222 to send a $5 donation. The series runs Thursday evenings at 7pm from July 14th through August 25th.
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