blackfest encoded.
blackfest encoded.
for us [the diaspora], by us [black creators]
creative direction for Stanford University’s first virtual music festival.
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Blackfest is a free, annual concert at Stanford hosted by the Black Family Gathering Committee (BFGC). Originating as a family picnic, decades of evolution have since transformed Blackfest into one of Stanford’s most highly anticipated and punctuating cultural events.
Throughout Stanford’s history, Blackfest was a time for the Black community, Bay Area artisans, and entertainers to take back space, which for so long had been denied on campus and in larger society.
In 2020, Blackfest arrived differently. The COVID-19 pandemic arrived and ruptured our assumed sense of community across the globe, on campuses, and at an individual level. Blackfest, along with other big events on campus, was put on hold but not forgotten.
Seeing an opportunity to create space in new forms, the planning committee, comprised of student organizations including the Stanford African Student Association (SASA), Stanford Concert Network (SCN), and MINT Magazine switched gears and undertook what would become Stanford’s first virtual concert.
The committee enlisted Push.live, a live production agency; and PURSUIT Design, a creative agency founded by stanford alums; to build and re-wire Blackfest into what would become Blackfest: ENCODED.
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The idea of Blackfest needed to be reexamined when the decision was made to host it virtually.
The process of developing the creative concept of Blackfest: ENCODED made us examine more deeply how the same feeling of community could be cultivated in a virtual landscape.
Floyd-Caroll presented the theme to me as being about “encoding black joy [and] undertaking the black virtual world.” Therefore, the team started to play with different ways to present this idea through graphics.
The team decided to play with ideas of Afrofunk, the evolution of tech and outer space-like visuals in order to connect with the theme of “making space.” Creating this space in a virtual world certainly brings out the tech aesthetic. After going back to the drawing board many times, the space-tech theme of Blackfest: ENCODED was born.
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It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more.
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It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more.
“virtual blackfest was a radical act of making space.”
— ‘Blackfest: ENCODED’ creating Black space in a virtual world’, Stanford Daily