With spring comes sunshine, shorts, lemonade — and at the University, the highly anticipated SpringFest.
This year, organizers of SpringFest anticipate it being one of the biggest yet, with more student group participation, a farmers market, new music performances and a fashion show.
From 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., most of the student organizations and performances will occur, which includes all participating student organizations. Six food trucks, including Hello! Ice Cream, Detroit BBQ Company and Bearclaw Coffee, will also be set up on North University in this time period.
SpringFest chair Nick Moeller, a Business senior, said the student organizations will put on an interactive activity to engage SpringFest attendees and allow them to learn more about various student groups.
“All student organizations that are there will be hosting some sort of engaging, interactive activity or exhibit, where students that are at SpringFest can come participate in some way,” Moeller said.
Student organizations are clustered into five categories: innovation, arts, sustainability, community service and social identity.
One of the areas during the day is the Startup Village, where 25 community and student-run startups will host information table to showcase their products to the University community. Some of the startups include Remake Detroit, EMERGEnT, Weekend Lessons and the Kiamani Movement.
Between 3 p.m. and 4 p.m. students will have the ability to network with the startups, as well as representatives from Goldman Sachs.
MUSIC Matters communications director Marli Siegel, an LSA senior, said this year’s event will feature more participation from student organizations across campus than in previous years.
“I think we’re expanding on everything, like there are different student organizations that are coming this year that weren’t there last year, that are just doing different things,” Siegel said.
One of the new features of this year’s SpringFest is a fashion show hosted by SHEI Magazine, NOiR, EnspiRED and Bronze Elegance. Their show, titled “one” will take place from 12 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. near the Diag, promotes collaboration between different fashion organizations on campus and engages attendees and community members with local fashion.
“The fashion show is a way that we’ve expanded in terms of promoting collaboration across different organizations on campus,” Moeller said. “That’s always been a big thing about SpringFest is trying to promote more collaboration among not only different communities, but similar communities on campus.”
FilmFest, another new feature in SpringFest, showcases student films and hosts Q&A sessions with members of the cast and production teams for some films. FilmFest begins at 8 p.m. Thursday, extending SpringFest to a multi-day event.
Other new features include a farmers market hosted by local vendors, a rap cypher where rappers have the chance to freestyle with each other, a wing eating contest and expanding to include new student group participation, such as Dance Marathon.
Perhaps the most anticipated part of SpringFest, however, is the live music playing throughout the day, ending with a concert by their feature performer, Common.
This year, the main stage — located on North University — will feature a variety of local bands like Jack and the Bear, Jonah Baseball, Joe Hertler and the Rainbow Seekers as well as other artists like Matt Daniels and Tut.
At 7 p.m., Common will take the stage at Hill Auditorium to end SpringFest. The proceeds from the concert will go to a summer leadership camp at the University for at-risk Detroit youth.
Organizers said the idea behind SpringFest is to promote student engagement and collaboration. The event is a way to provide a space for organizations to convey the work that they’ve done on campus over the year, or display a capstone event.
“It’s a nice end of the year event if you just walk around for an hour, listen to music, and then go on with the rest of your day,” Siegel said. “It’s just one way to bring students together.”