Michael Sean Harris - Contributed

On Saturday evening, co-organiser of the Kingston on the Edge (KOTE), Omar Francis, sounded like a happy man at the fourth event in the urban arts festival's third staging.

Considering that KOTE 2009 had started the previous night at Redbones Blues Café, Braemar Avenue, New Kingston, the fourth event has come up remarkably quickly.

It is a measure of how compact the festival is; after multiple events at more than 20 venues across the capital, it ends on Saturday, June 27 with a party at a so far undisclosed location.

There was no trouble finding the venue for the opening, though, Francis estimating about 400 persons turned out for the kick-off event at Redbones. The audience turned out at different stages - the early birds taking in the art and sculpture on the lawn and the documentary Why Do Jamaicans Run So Fast? (which will be featured at the American Black Film Festival in Miami Beach, Florida, June 24-27), the later folk targeting the music of gas money and Michael Sean Harris along with the Devices Band and some dropping in at odd times to socialise.

KOTE is organised by Enola Williams, Beatriz Pozueta, Carolyn Lazarus and Francis, who said, "We knew there was a great deal of interesting stuff going on, and we wanted to make sure people know it. Like Michael Sean Harris, people did not really know about him, but he rocked the show. People were amazed."

Comfort zone

Adding, "It is about exposing what is there, but also getting people outside their comfort zone."

The quartet also found itself venturing outside of what it is accustomed to, as none had organised anything this big before. And it is growing, Francis saying that this is not only in terms of the audience, but also the scope of KOTE in terms of "the breadth of what is shown."

In some ways, it has also developed into something more than what they first envisioned. Francis said that the festival has become edgy, somewhat on its own, "but that's OK."

About three quarters of this year's KOTE events are free and, where there is a charge, it does not go over $1,000 ("unless we go crazy and decide to charge for the closing party"). Francis says the objective is to make the festival accessible to the public. "It is not for the greater of ourselves (the organisers) or making a profit," Francis told The Gleaner.

"It is not about us doing something, it is everybody working together. That's why it has been so successful."

'Working together' includes persons doing things for KOTE that the organisers would not have requested. And there has been support on the marketing side from the Public Sector Development Programme of the Visual and Performing Arts Cluster, organised through Jamaica Trade and Invest.

Corporate sponsorship

While there has been a little corporate sponsorship, Francis says, "We are trying to shy away from it. Sometimes there is a little too much corporate sponsorship. Art is the bottom line. We stay away from anything that might detract from that."

Among this week's KOTE events that Francis is looking forward to (and he says that the other organisers would probably have different ones), are 'Dance on the Edge' and 'Theatre on the Edge', set for Monday and Wednesday evening respectively at the Philip Sherlock Centre for the Creative Arts, UWI, Mona. Then there is the festival of 10-minute films at Redbones on Thursday night.

"We are happy with the standard of the art that we have been getting," he said. "We are batting a very good average at the moment."