Essence Festival of Culture is back with a multiday live and virtual lineup that includes informative daytime sessions and entertaining evening celebrations.
After being forced to hold the annual festival virtually in 2020 due to the pandemic, Essence announced how “thrilled” it is to incorporate some live events for the 2021 festival. While revealing the festival’s 2021 theme to ‘Live Loud’, Essence shared its rollout plans in curating “an invaluable hybrid experience that offers the best of in-person and virtual worlds.”
Known for bringing thousands of visitors to New Orleans over the Fourth of July weekend, this year’s festival promises to offer “a celebration of the resilience, power, and achievement of our community and the omnipresence of our culture,” Essence said in a statement. “The Festival’s virtual programming will include powerful daytime interactive sessions and star-studded evening concerts and connections.”
As part of the annual festival’s partnership with the City of New Orleans and the State of Louisiana, live-to-tape activations will be made available only to local New Orleans and Louisiana residents while honoring essential workers and first responders. The in-person events will all be in strict adherence to guidance from local health agencies, Billboard reports. Additionally, the two weekend-long event will feature a ‘taste of New Orleans’ experience within the Festival’s jam-packed schedule of events.
What originally started as an annual in-person event prior to the global health crisis of 2020, Essence shared how excited it was to reach a more global audience last year. When the festival went virtual in 2020, they were able to reach more than 45 million full-stream views with their exclusive content that “informed, inspired and empowered” the community.
The “can’t-miss content centered around culture, equity and celebration” will be streamed on ESSENCEStudios.com over two weekends from June 25-27 and July 2-4. The highly anticipated festival lineup will be announced soon. Updates and announcements on what’s to come can be found HERE.