Our November Lublin edition of Young Art Fair just wrapped, and it was… interesting. In a good way, but also in a “let’s take notes for the future” kind of way.
First things first: for Lublin, things went well. For our standards, though, it was the smallest edition we’ve had in a long while — definitely the smallest one this year. Fewer exhibitors, fewer visitors, even though our promotion budget wasn’t significantly lower compared to similar cities.
Honestly? It makes sense.
Lublin is a lovely city, but it’s smaller, and the overall pool of people actively interested in visual art is simply not as large. If you only have ~330k official residents, the ceiling is naturally lower. Nothing wrong with that — just reality.
The human side of the event
The team at Centrum Kultury w Lublinie was genuinely warm, helpful, and welcoming — at least everyone we worked with directly. A huge number of people work there, so naturally we met personalities ranging from lovely to slightly… provincial. This came with a few funny (and not-so-funny) side quests:
A lady hired from a Facebook job group to hand out flyers tried to guilt-trip us into paying her for not doing the task.
A guy hired to help us carry things “borrowed” 100 zł to exchange it for smaller bills, told us “take my jacket so I don’t run away,” then ran away with both the jacket and the extra 50 zł.
Both hired from Facebook job boards. Lesson learned.
But nothing catastrophic. Mostly amusing, slightly annoying.
What did work extremely well?
Despite lower numbers, artists told us it was one of the most successful fairs they’ve ever had — the highest sales-to-visitor ratio of the entire year. Genuinely surprising, and very encouraging.
And the feedback from local artists and the CK Lublin team was unanimous:
“We’ve never seen this many people at any cultural event here.”
If that’s the case — we’ll count it as a success.
Why we went to Lublin in the first place
Our philosophy has always been:
Art Fairs shouldn’t exist only in big capitals.
If we believe in decentralizing access to art, we have to test this in real life — not just talk about it.
Lublin is our attempt to push that idea one step further.
To see whether medium-sized cities need this kind of event.
To learn what the “critical population threshold” is for a sustainable art fair.
To measure the real cultural appetite, not just assume it.
Our conclusions aren’t fully formed yet — it’s too early to say anything with confidence.
Will we return?
Yes.
This was only the first data point. We’re planning another edition next year — both to verify our observations and to give Lublin another chance to surprise us.
But overall, we’re still not fully convinced that art fairs make sense outside the Polish Big Seven cities. Most likely, the optimal model might look like:
1 fair per year in smaller cities (pre-winter holiday fairs),
2 fairs per year in major cities.
Based on that strategy, we’re preparing to launch 16 art fairs next year.
Details dropping soon.
One thing’s for sure — Lublin gave us a lot to think about.
A small edition, yes. But a meaningful one. And absolutely worth it.
Also we still invite everyone to post in our community - YOUNG ART FAIR , we changed some rules for the community. Now we curate only users with higher reputation or checked
PLEASE NOTE - WE WILL UPVOTE ONLY Verified ARTISTS - to be verified - you need to have 65+ with history on Hive will have to link your profile to instagram or other social media with #YafHive or #imonhive - profiles needs to be active
NEXT EVENT : KRAKÓW - Back to Palace Potocki at the Main Square - this one going to be big
