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Interview: EDM fest has a softer, humanitarian side to it, who knew?

What do fans looking for an electronic dance music fix and mobilizing development aid share in common? On June 26, it was the Thank You Festival — amassing 19,000 fans to be more accurate — held at Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, MD.

The benefit festival featured high-profile EDM acts like Tiësto, Above & Beyond, and Cedric Gervais to draw greater efforts, calling for further action to end extreme poverty by 2030. Organized by Global Citizen and the World Childhood Foundation, the event emphasized child survival and protection — not the usual topic for those going to see artists more typically popular at raves.

Global Citizen is an online platform and mobile application setting out to create a new model of social activism and engagement, according to the Global Poverty Project’s US Country Director Justine Lucas. As part of the advocacy organization, the platform sets up entertainment events with underpinnings of social responsibility targeted toward the general public, particularly millennials.

Lucas spoke with us about the unique approach Global Citizen takes in doling out concert tickets, through direct encouragement with tasks like sharing on social media platforms and signing online petitions, as a way of taking actions that are simple, are nonetheless “timely and targeted.”

“I think we’re bucking the trend in that it’s not a show you just show up to and learn about the issues, you engage with the issues before you arrive,” says Lucas, of the actions concert-goers took beforehand to understand the focus on helping all children survive and thrive.

“There’s no other driver as powerful as music — how would we get 20,000 millennials in one place and have them learning about something?” explains Lucas. “Music has always been for us, a great movement builder.”

It showed last fall at the live-streamed Global Citizen festival in Central Park with headliners that included Stevie Wonder, Alicia Keys, and Kings of Leon, which drew a crowd three times the size, and had the omnipresent Bono popping up on stage. So you know what that signifies.

According to Lucas, one of the unexpected takeaways from the concert series is the attachment found among the artists to the movement’s causes: “Historically, we’ve tried to friend artists that care about the cause or are attached to one of the causes we’re campaigning on.”

“Not only are you having these artists up there performing, and its amazing because you’re there to see them, but the fact that they’re connected to the issue — I think there’s nothing more powerful than that,” says Lucas, referring to HIV/AIDS advocate Alicia Keys as an example. “She spoke really candidly about her passion on that [cause] and having that level of engagement and sharing that with the audience is extremely powerful.”

 

“[Global Citizen] offers platforms for commitments that can be made on stage and opportunities to bring people together — they draw mass attention,” says Lucas. “So I feel like people are drawn together by something that they love, but then have an experience that’s really meaningful.”

Funnily enough, this time that means EDM too.

Article by Sandy Chung. Follow her on Twitter @sndychng.

 

 



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