For over 40 years, BRIC Celebrate Brooklyn! Festival has been taking place in New York’s Prospect Park. It’s one of the city’s longest-running outdoor performing arts festivals — and it’s free.
The summer-long festival kicked off last week and Executive Producer Diane Eber dished to ABC Audio on what festival-goers can expect.
“First and foremost, good vibes,” she shares. “We worked really hard to create those good vibes across the board. From our staff, from the moment you get in line, we want that experience to start.”
In addition to the good vibes, comes good music, and Eber assures they’re booking “a little bit of something for everyone.”
New to this year’s lineup is the Juneteenth UnityFest concert on Sunday, June 19, featuring some of the biggest gospel artists like Tye Tribbett, Deborah Cox, Israel Houghton, and more — and Eber credits Robert Randolph as the mastermind.
“He reached out to us,” she explains. “You know, we know him as an amazing guitarist and he had this vision and was like, ‘I’m doing this and I’m going to do it somewhere.’ And we were like, ‘Do it here.'”
“We worked closely with Robert Randolph Foundation and UnityFest to curate this, and it felt really important that it wasn’t us curating something, but that a Black artist came to us and was like, ‘This is how it should be, and that it was through their voice.'”
Whether you attend for the Juneteenth UnityFest or for another act, Eber expressed that “the core of what we do is providing a space for art and community to come together in a beautiful outdoor setting, which feels more important than ever now.”
“Our vision for this season is the concept of to gather together, the power of joy,” she adds.
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