May is Mental Health Awareness Month and, in our modern society, many people are struggling with loneliness and finding connection with others.
Alison Friedman, the Executive and Artistic Director for Carolina Performing Arts, says helping address that is at the core of her department’s new festival unveiled on Tuesday.
“How do we combat all of this loneliness, isolation and disconnection,” she asks. “We create spaces and experiences where people come together, put their phones down, put the screens down, be in-person [and] in real life for a shared experience.”
The event, called “All. Together. Now.”, is set to debut next February and take place every year. The four-day festival will feature artistic programming that Friedman says will help drive community, either through its subjects, methods or locations. And perhaps more than typical Carolina Performing Arts events at Memorial Hall.
“When you come to a [Carolina Performing Arts] performance on a Tuesday night,” she says, “you come with your friends or your family, you watch a performance and you go home with people you know. You might have had a great experience – but you didn’t meet a neighbor, you didn’t commune with a stranger. What’s so great about a festival is it is a concentrated dose of arts experiences, creative experiences and all people coming together.
“[This festival] is built and designed to bring folks together,” Friedman continues, “to meet someone new, to have a conversation you wouldn’t otherwise have had, and really celebrate what makes this community so special.”
And “All. Together. Now.” isn’t just an allusion to its attendees, Friedman says, but to its variety and scope.
“It’s all the art forms, all the experiences, and all the places – this is across campus and downtown,” Friedman says.
During the four days, Carolina Performing Arts’ festival programming will be divided into three categories: pass events, open gatherings, and a special one-night presentation. The pass events are a new concept for CPA, with Friedman saying the daily pass will be the easiest way to access several overlapping showcases. Per usual, UNC students, faculty, staff and alumni will get discounted rates, and the executive director says they will be broadly priced to encourage exploration from the morning to nighttime.
“The day pass will allow you into performances, films and experiences that you’re really invited to experience from beginning to end,” she says. “It’s still first-come first serve. The great part about it is we’re repeating those experiences a couple times throughout each day, as well as across the days – and we want to have so much going on that you have to make a choice [about what to attend] and hopefully you have to come back to get everything in that you want to experience.”
Meanwhile, the open events will feature artist workshops, musical jam sessions, student showcases, ask-an-expert drop-ins and more free programming for anyone. Friedman describes those two categories as giving participants a “choose your own adventure” way to experience the festival throughout Chapel Hill – with the special performance being a separately-ticketed event and a major draw.
While some of the “All. Together. Now.” festival will take place in UNC’s Memorial Hall, where Carolina Performing Arts’ seasonal programming is often staged, much will also take place at other spaces across campus and Chapel Hill. (Photo via Jon Gardiner/UNC-Chapel Hill.)
That performance, as well as all the other participating artists and events, will be unveiled in August before day passes go on sale in September. Friedman says CPA is also continuing to partner with businesses and downtown stakeholders to build out its options for staging programming throughout the weekend.
The university’s performing arts arm is focused on building the “scaffolding” to not only make it easy for partners to work with CPA this year but for future editions of “All. Together. Now.” Friedman says her team is looking at the festival’s pilot as the next three years instead of just 2027. And each year’s iteration will have a theme the programming will draw from or reference.
Friedman says to launch the festival, they decided on “love and hope” being the core theme. She describes that choice as summarizing what takes place on UNC’s campus and across the Research Triangle.
“It is all of these people invested in research, creativity, innovation, next generations…that is a huge act of love and hope,” Friedman says. “And it’s what artists do as well, as they’re asking big questions, as they are invested in creativity. So, [we] are bringing that all together now in a great celebration to launch what will be an annual event.”
“All. Together. Now.” is set to take place from Feb. 18 through Feb. 21, 2027. Interest forms and a Frequently Asked Questions page about the new festival can be found on the Carolina Performing Arts website.
Featured photo via Carolina Performing Arts/UNC Chapel-Hill.
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