BU Alumni and Students Host Virtual Music Festival to Support Performers and the Arts
When offices, restaurants, bars, and entertainment venues around the world began to close in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, BU alums Neelu Mohaghegh (Questrom’18 & COM’19) and Sherif T. Bakare (COM’17) wanted to find a way to support artists and performers who were dealing with business closures and canceled shows.
On May 16th, just one month after their first brainstorm session, they were hosting isolated sounds, a two-day virtual music festival showcasing 24 different artists (musicians, coffee roasters, a dancer, and painter) that raised funds for MusiCares, a charity founded by the Recording Academy, which supports those in the creative community who need critical assistance. The planning and execution of the event taught the duo a lot about building a team and how to launch a community-centered project, and has prepared them to take their idea to the next level.
“[Sherif and I] wanted to plan an event together for emerging creatives in Los Angeles for a while, but we were so busy we never really got around to it. When the pandemic hit, Sherif reached out to me for a catch-up call and mid-conversation he brought up the idea of us doing an online event. I said yes and we came up with the name and the idea and pretty much the entire skeleton of the plan on a 4 hour-long call one night, and the rest was history,” said Neelu.
From there, they set aside time every day outside of their full-time jobs to work on the festival–Sherif is a creative assistant at Netflix and Neelu is a social media coordinator for AEG Presents. They also tapped into their network of friends and BU alumni, many who graduated from Questrom School of Business and the College of Communication.
When the weekend of the festival arrived in May, BU alumni and students made up the entire seven-person planning team, a number of the performance acts, viewers, social media followers, and donors. By the end of the event, the team’s efforts resulted in more than 800 viewers from 29 countries, and 51 donations raising over $1,200 for MusiCares.
Since launching almost three years ago, Innovate@BU has seen a steady increase of students and alumni who are seeking advice and resources to help them launch community-centered projects and events like isolated sounds. Neelu and Sherif shared three tips that fellow BU Terriers should keep in mind as they begin working on a new idea, whether it’s an event, media campaign, creative content project, or community program.
1. Build a team.
“Never feel like you have to do this alone, especially as the world increases in technology and allows us to connect with people. We should be taking advantage of this.”
For Neelu and Sherif, they built a team where each member brought a unique set of strengths and skills, including their own roles as “the leaders, project directors, ideators, and liaisons for talent relations, as well as the hosts.”
Their team, made up of all BU alumni and students, included: Kaajal Patel (Questrom’20), who has experience in planning and promoting music festivals, acted as the creative director for the website, social media, and design work; Sarah Watanabe (Questrom’18) researched and helped determine which platforms to use for donations, a website, and streaming, as well as managed day-of social media; Ben Atlas (CAS’21) analyzed event analytics; Jack Gregory (Questrom’18) provided technology insight; and Tami Nguyen (COM’18) produced the festival’s recap video.
2. Be prepared for the worst.
The pair suggest creating “a contingencies list and solutions to those backup solutions. It’s like Murphy’s Law, ‘anything that can go wrong will go wrong’, so expect it to happen so you’re not taken by surprise if it does happen during the event and you’ll know how to go about fixing it.”
3. Stick with it.
“A lot of people come up with great ideas, but never get a chance to follow through because life gets too busy or crazy sometimes–and that’s fair– but if you constantly remind yourself of the “why” you came up for the event or project and the value behind it for you and others, you’ll continue to work on it until you’ve finally done it. Then, you can look back and finally breathe because you made it happen rather than wonder what could have been,” they said.
After the success of the event, the team decided to rebrand isolated sounds into a new media collective and outlet called Channel Sounds where they can scale their vision.
“We want to share the stories, highlight the talent, and accentuate the self-expression of the creative community around us. We feel that everyone makes a sound of their own and should have the ability to share it with the world. We want Channel Sounds to be the conduit of the emerging pop-culture scene. Our plan to channel these sounds are through events we host, talents we showcase, designs we create, features on what and who is up and coming, and immersing people into what’s new and exciting in the creative world,” said Neelu and Sherif.
Learn more about Channel Sounds by following them on Instagram at @channel.sounds or checking out their website at channelsounds.com. For those with questions or are interested in being featured or collaborating, reach out to the team at hello@channelsounds.com.
