What was that noise on Saturday? Hundreds of students gathered in the cold to attend MUSIC Matters’ 9th annual music and lifestyle festival, SpringFest, on April 9th from 11:00am-7:00pm on Palmer Field. The full-day event brought together student organizations, local businesses, food trucks, and student performers to provide UMich students with a fun end of year event.
SpringFest kicked off with a performance from FunKtion, UMich’s premier, all male cultural hip-hop dance team. FunKtion was followed by several captivating student-led visual performances from DB3, Element1, Pure Dance, and Photonix, capped off by a wing eating competition on stage at noon sponsored by Side Biscuit. The winner, Max McLaughlin won a Side Biscuit T shirt and gift card.
“Side Biscuit’s wings are absolutely incredible, and there is no other wing that I would rather eat 23 of,” McLuaghlin said.
Attendees and performers who weren’t able to compete got to enjoy food and coffee from three food trucks: Detroit BBQ Company, BearClaw Coffee, and Kona Ice.
LSA junior Anna Lehrer, MUSIC Matters SpringFest Chair, was excited to see everybody come together for a successful SpringFest.
“After 3 years of waiting to see an in-person SpringFest, it was so exciting to finally see MUSIC Matters’ hard work pay off,” Lehrer said. “We have so much talent on our campus, and it was really great to be able to showcase it and highlight other student orgs and local businesses as well.”
Performances resumed at 1:30pm, starting with a performance from the School of Music, Theatre and Dance. Then, concert-goers were able to enjoy the music from five local bands composed of UMich students: GravyTrain, Alison Albrecht, Atomic Sauce, Electric Chic, and Cece June.
When concertgoers weren’t enjoying the performances, they were able to walk around Palmer Field and interact with our sponsors and student organization activations. Attendees were able to take free RedBull from the MUSIC Matters tent, win free concert tickets from Live Nation, free LineLeap credit, or free credit and swag from Snackpass. Students were also able to talk to and learn more about student groups such as Wolverine Support Network and the Michigan Concrete Canoe Team.
LSA sophomore Martha Lewand, who attended her first SpringFest this year, was happy to go to SpringFest as a fun way to take a break from school.
“I really appreciate MUSIC Matters for putting on an event like this because it’s a good way to take a break from studying and to destress as finals begin,” Lewand said. “My favorite part of SpringFest was watching Gravy Train perform — they were really good and engaging.”
Attendees were also able to learn about MUSIC Matters’ 2021-2022 CoMMunity Partners, Do Random Acts of Kindness (DoRAK) and Students for Clean Energy. All of the student organizations were able to further gain recognition on campus and educate attendees about their goals, missions, and how they affect campus.
This year’s SpringFest also furthered our goals to make the festival a zero-waste event. This year’s festival highlighted several campus sustainability initiatives, including the Student Sustainability Coalition, (Friends of the) Campus Farm, Global CO2 Initiative Student Association and more. MDining was set up at SpringFest to give out salad and reusable utensils. SpringFest also featured compost and recycling bins to ensure that attendees were disposing of their garbage in the most sustainable manner. And of course, Rufus the Recycling Mascot was at SpringFest all day.
Information senior Gillian Wasserman, Co-President of MUSIC Matters, was proud of all the hard work done across all five MUSIC Matters committees to make SpringFest successful this year.
“I’m so proud that after months of logistics, collaboration, and teamwork, our efforts paid off at SpringFest! In this year’s unique landscape with covid uncertainty and our first in-person SpringFest in three years, this was no small feat,” Wasserman said. “All five of our committees worked hard to communicate with stakeholders, foster coordination, and push for our vision to make it all possible.”
MUSIC Matters would like to thank all of our sponsors, partners, performers, and of course, concertgoers for making the first in-person SpringFest since 2019 a huge success!