The student leaders behind Revelry, the student body’s first official end-of-the-year celebration, announced Wednesday the musical event will take place at Engineering Mall and Union South Plaza from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. on May 4th, the same day as the Mifflin Street Block Party.
Revelry will be a ticketed music festival featuring artists that cater to a large student audience, according to Bess Donoghue, Revelry spokesperson.
Donoghue said the festival is not anti-Mifflin although both events share the same weekend.
“It is the last weekend of the academic semester, so that’s just the day [Revelry] fell on,” she said.
Tickets for the festival are tentatively scheduled to go on sale April 8.
The price for University of Wisconsin students will fall in the range of $5 to $10, according to Revelry Executive Committee Director Sarah Mathews.
“The primary audience for this event is UW-Madison students,” Mathews said. “We are structuring everything … entry and ticket pricing to [target] students.”
The event’s planning committee has not formally decided whether to allow non-UW students at the event and whether the ticket price would be significantly higher for people outside of UW should they attend the event.
According to Mathews, one potential model is requiring student to present their ID at entry but allowing them to also sponsor college-age guests.
The committee will announce the musical lineups four to five days prior to ticket sale. The committee is in the process of negotiating offers with musicians. There will also be other art-related activities at the festival, Donoghue said.
Mathews said the committee aims to encompass a wide variety of music genres at the festival.
“One of our criteria…is mass appeal, what students want to see, and we want to value gender and cultural inclusivity and diversity,” Matthews said. “We also want to program for the wide variety of music tastes.”
While the projected budget for the Revelry festival was $60,000 to $90,000, through fundraising and general supports from the university and private entities, the committee now has a budget over $100,000, Donoghue said.
According to Mathews, the artist fee was the main reason behind the fundraising because the artist fee in the original budget was too modest to match the vision of the event.
Projected private funding makes up 53 percent of the budget, according to a release by the Revelry Executive Committee, and no funding for the event comes from segregated fees.
“As students ourselves, we are committed to keeping Revelry as accessible to our peers as possible,” Donoghue said.
The UW Police Department will focus primarily on Revelry since Mifflin is out of its jurisdiction, according to Josh Levin, a member of the planning committee. Madison Police Department has offered to supply forces for Revelry, he added.
The committee is in the process of applying for a permit for Randall Avenue with the city.
Donoghue said the event has received positive support from the city government and UWPD.
The event is endorsed by Interim Chancellor David Ward, Mayor Paul Soglin, Associated Students of Madison and Damon Williams, vice provost and chief diversity officer for the division of diversity, equity and educational achievement.
