Revelry Music and Arts Festival is relocating to Library Mall this year to make the end-of-the-year festival more accessible and engaging for students, festival directors said at a press conference Monday.
The new, bigger location will allow the May 2 festival to present more student-created art installations and can accommodate more student ticketholders. With new food trucks and art pieces, the Library Mall area will feel more like an outdoor music festival, Operations Director Mickey Stone said.
Although the full lineup will not be released until the end of the week, early bird tickets are now available through the end of the week, Marketing Director Ronan Daley said.
Through three waves of ticket sales, Executive Director Ayla Kress said they expect to sell 10,000 tickets. Eighty-five percent of the tickets will be allotted for students and the new space should comfortably accommodate this 4,000-person increase from last year, Stone said.
The Terrace stage and silent disco will return from previous years. A silent disco is a space where music will play through headphones to a group of dancers, but without the headphones the area will be silent.
The Terrace stage in particular will be a platform highlighting student performers. Executive Director Ben Arden said they will host an a cappella competition for the first time on the Terrace stage.
As the largest student-run event on campus, they have an opportunity to engage with student groups outside of the festival date, Arden said.
“The first two years were about introducing Revelry to the campus. This year takes it a little bit further … One of our goals is to represent the community and our role within it,” Daly said.
Both private and public donations fund Revelry each year, but this year the pool has diversified. For the first time ever, the City of Madison has helped sponsor the event. They still have not had to pull from student-segregated fees, Arden said.
Although he wouldn’t disclose any details about the lineup, Arden said they are adding international acts in addition to a headliner based on student input.
“Our headlining artist this year was selected as one of the top artists that students of UW-Madison wanted to see this year from our yearly student survey,” he said.
Early bird tickets are on sale at ticketmaster.com and at the Memorial Union Box Office. In this first wave, they will be five dollars for students and $25 for non-students. In the next wave they will be $10 for students and $30 for non-students. On the day of, they will increase by another five dollars, respectively.
