Springfest is helping us all practice escapism from our busy lives as 070 Shake, a featured artist for Fred Again.. and Kanye West, and Alexander 23, the “IDK You Yet” singer, are set to headline this year’s concert, according to the USC Concerts Committee.
Springfest will take place on April 6 at 4 p.m. The concert is the first event hosted on USC’s newly renovated McCarthy Quad, according to Co-Executive Director of USC Concerts Committee Shea Hanke.
“This is the last show of the year,” said Hanke. “We have five incredible acts who are all hand-picked because we believe that the students would love them. It’s a big end-of-year congratulations to all of the hard work that all of our students have been putting in.”
Funding for Springfest comes from the Undergraduate Student Government’s programming budget. USG allocated $560,000 to put on three concerts: Welcome Back, Conquest and Springfest, according to Riley Wheaton, the other co-executive director of USC Concerts Committee.
The USC Concerts Committee works with college agents to create the best possible lineup that fits within the committee’s budget.
“It’s a mix-match game of what can we afford within our budget range and what’s going to be appealing to the masses,” said Wheaton. “You want to make sure that we’re representing a lot of different communities and putting together a holistic lineup that people are going to be excited about.”
The USC Concerts Committee has to pay for “everything you see on the quad,” from the stage to security, said Wheaton.
“I remember last year, when I looked at it, it ended up being around 73% that goes towards production costs, and only 27% goes towards artists,” said Wheaton.
Inflation has increased production costs and has been a challenge for the USC Concerts Committee since the pandemic.
“When you scroll back on a lot of our archive posts on Instagram and see the magnitude that the shows used to have on campus, it looks like a Coachella stage,” said Hanke. “I think that they had a much larger budget and at that time, money went a lot further.”
Despite these challenges, the USC Concerts Committee “got creative” and has big plans for this year’s show.
The Concerts Committee is changing up the layout of the event. They are planning on having two stages across from each other for the first time.
“We have a dueling student stage, which is something new we’re doing this year,” said Hanke. “So you can run back and forth kind of like a real music festival.”
The USC Concerts Committee said they work hard to ensure McCarthy Quad, a space students typically use as a study space, play frisbee on and walk through to get to class, transforms from a university quad to a festival grounds.
“We really try to reinvent the space,” said Wheaton. “For Conquest, we had a Ferris wheel and different blow-up obstacle course things. Last year at Springfest, we had this big colorful obstacle course there as an art piece.”
According to the USC Concerts Committee, Springfest strives to involve students as much as possible.
This spring’s concert will feature a student vendor village and student artist showcase.
“Our student vendor village is something we have had for the past few years, at least since COVID,” said Hanke. “We really love highlighting student talent. We actually have student artists in some format at every one of our shows.”
“Doing it with a dueling stage will hopefully bring a little bit more of a platform to student artists,” said Hanke.
This school year, Pi’erre Bourne headlined the Welcome Back concert, and Icona Pop headlined the Conquest concert. Jace Smolansky, the assistant executive director of the USC Concerts Committee, said they are excited to make Springfest their best concert to date.
“Our committee had a lot of turnover following COVID, so Welcome Back was a lot of our committee’s first show,” said Smolansky. “For this show, we’re just excited to bring everyone’s past experience from the past two shows and let every committee shine in their field.”
“There’s no reason you wouldn’t want to see “Escapism,” “Danielle” and “Ghost Town” go down live,” said Wheaton. “Like how can you get Kanye and Fred again.. at the same time?”