Hello Her Campus readers! We’re excited tell you about an amazing group of people that is looking to make positive change on our campus. Have you heard of MUSIC Matters? That was rhetorical but we’re sure the answer is yes. We all know that since 2011 this organization has been bringing huge artists to Michigan. However, MUSIC Matters is much more than just a group of students who plan great concerts. Standing for “Michigan Undergraduates Serving in the Community,” these students work each year to host an event called SpringFest, which has the goal of uniting as many student organizations together in one place at one time, and promotes cooperation.
This year, SpringFest will be on Friday, April 17th in the Diag from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. At 7 p.m. doors for the headlining show, featuring Grammy and Academy Award-Winning hip-hop artist Common, will open and the show will start at 8 p.m. We were fortunate enough to get to sit down and talk to some of the brilliant minds that are putting this great event together. These include Nick Moeller, the SpringFest Chair, Marli Siegel, the Communications Director, Darren Appel, the President, Jibran Ahmed, the Vice President, and Madeleine Choné, the Talent and Concert Chair.
Her Campus: First, tell us a little bit about your roles in MUSIC Matters.
Nick Moeller: I essentially spend all of my time organizing the festival. I contact startups, student organizations on campus, and get in touch with high school students.
Marli Siegel: I am the Communications director. My job involves running through developing marketing plans. I am involved with all of the advertising and graphic design, and I also reach out to publications. We have taken marketing and advertising further by coming up with videos, as well as redesigning the website. We have come up with one video. Back in October we had an open mic night, where we first launched video advertisement.
Darren Appel: I oversee everything that happens. A lot of it is managing relationships with students, faculty, a lot of general strategy. I deal with all of marketing to make sure it’s timed at the right time, and make sure that the timeline of everything is in order.
Madeleine Choné: I handle the music production, generally the stage during the day at SpringFest, as well as the headlining show at Hill Auditorium.
Jibran Ahmed: My day job is fundraising, which is securing external fundraising sources for events and concerts. This can be encouraging individual members to fundraise, giving them opportunities to do so, and finding external sponsors and corporations.
HC: Where did your inspiration for SpringFest stem from?
DA: Basically, there was no end of the year event on campus that brought everyone together for one day, with one common theme. We came up with the idea to create a giant festival to bring together a lot of the student organizations on campus, and to organize it in some kind of efficient manner. We have a very decentralized campus; specifically, one thing we looked at was how the engineers are very segregated, how the “Ross kids” stay in Ross, and the overall lack of collaboration. SpringFest has different themes, so if people are interested in sustainability, they can go one place [in the festival], if they like the arts, they can go to another place. We know people like entertainment and food. We also thought, “What if we have local musicians?” We bring in local startups as well. Also, we noticed that there had not been any concerts on campus, instead, they were at Eastern. We came up with the idea of creating a concert where we could take the money we make from it and give the proceeds to the students to solve some sort of public issue. Our goal was to make this beneficial for the student body as a whole. The students decide on an issue in the community and choose to donate. The first year we chose to donate to Mott Children’s Hospital. The second year we chose to give financial aid on campus, and gave a $50,000 dollar scholarship to an incoming student. This was one of the first shcolarships of its kind in the country. Last year there was a lot attention on BBUM, which brought attention to diversity on campus. We announced the creation of a summer leadership camp that will be next summer. We will bring approximately fifty students from Detroit area to the University of Michigan to attend a leadership camp. We are doing everything from finding the students to designing a curriculum. The students engaged in the program will be rising [high school] sophomores.
HC: What was your inspiration for the way SpringFest is modeled?
MC: “South by Southwest” inspired us because it is a cultural movement. Everywhere you talk, you look at South by Southwest to see what next big thing is coming up. Like this, we have a lot of student org involvement. What we expanded off of them is the idea of themes. Ours are social identity, sustainability, music in the arts, innovation, and community service.
HC: Can you talk to me a little bit about the events within SpringFest?
MC: This year we are having a Fashion Show.
JA: The main goal of the fashion show goal is really to bridge and build together the fashion community on campus and allow them to create one singular event. Our five themes will be incorporated into the show. Our general goal is to have organizations interact and collaborate on an experience they haven’t collaborated on before.
HC: How you get organizations to get involved, and how do you work together to advertise?
NM: In terms of student outreach, we do a lot of work with the different colleges on campus. We work through them to get in contact with some of the student organizations that fall under their sponsorship. You can either be a volunteer student organization or sponsorship. We will go through some of the sponsors on campus. I personally do a lot of outreach over email and just reach out to different groups on campus, especially some of the more prominent groups. We will have meetings with each of the groups to preface SpringFest. We host workshops throughout the semester. They focus on the logistics of the event planning.
JA: Being active in community definitely is a good way to get them involved and create culture of collaboration. This allows them to work together and collaborate on SpringFest.
MC: The Stand By Blue movement started at the beginning of the year.
MS: Stand By Blue originality started in response to a backlash on athletics in the beginning of the year. Nick and the creators kind of figured, “What is one way we can eleviate it?” We are now using this movement to unify student orgs. We all do something in one way. Everyone does something, and a lot of groups actually interact. What if groups could overlap in their goals? We think we could make a bigger impact if we work together under one community as the University of Michigan students. That actually got a lot of promotion this coming week. The Daily wrote an article about it. We did an event on campus where people wrote what they stand by on chalkboard in the Diag. We are figuring out ways to unify the campus, even in small ways like that.
HC: How do you think publicity has changed for MUSIC Matters? How do you think you have evolved as a group?
MS: This is actually my first year doing communications. I was involved with the talent and concert side before and decided to switch. I have always felt that MUSIC Matters has had a lot of potential to reach out to groups on campus, and reach out to new groups in different ways. I am still keeping up with social media, getting interviews and connecting with external publications. When I came in, our website wasn’t that functional. We have improved the website, which is a great way to drive a lot of traffic. I saw that what we weren’t reaching were different mediums, both digitally and outside of the Diag. It’s something I felt like I could play with and reach a lot of creativity. It takes a lot of work, but we are looking into developing a relationship with a video company or advertising agency so we can foster that creativity a little more. And then things like reaching the Diag: if we are promoting that SpringFest is made for student orgs where the Diag is that place to unify everyone, then why not promote unity on the most unified place on campus? We actually are coming up with some more ideas on the Diag, trying to think a little bit outside of the box.
MC: We have been expanding a little bit in terms of events, trying to engage the campus more. We had an open mic night, had some events at World of Beer with live music, and we now have a music site called “10 After” to engage more local artists and trying to give a voice to student body and campus as a whole.
MS: While there are 6-9 different committees and different positions people can hold, all of our goals are worked on collectively and internally.
HC: How do you get artists involved in the event?
MC: We contact agents like one does with any other show. We try to contact artists specifically that are relevant at the time and embody the ethos of our organization. From there it is just a standard negotiation to highlight we are a nonprofit organization.
HC: How do you get student performers?
DA: A lot of student performers actually reach out to us at this point. We try to identify people in the community who are pretty relevant.
MC: Some of the bands that do come through are from labels. We are working to engage the student population. We have a showcase next week to compete for set times. I am also working with Hip Hop Congress and Crowd 313 to get Hip Hop and EDM artists from the Detroit area and maybe even a larger area as well.
Interested in learning more about MUSIC Matters? See Facebook for the SpringFest event, and the Springfest Concert Event. Check out MUSIC Matters at michiganmusicmatters.com!