While so many local festivals and events were cancelled or scaled back in 2020 due to COVID-19, Acadian’s two largest music festivals took their acts even further. In April, Festival International (FIL) was one of the first music festivals around the world to host a virtual event that proved to be a huge success. When the board of Festivals Acadiens was trying to decide what to do in October, they turned to Executive Director Scott Feehan and the FIL staff for help.

Together, the two festivals decided to take what FIL had done with three days of pre-recorded content streamed virtually even further. “I watched a lot of music streaming and noticed that a lot of it was very rudimentary in its presentation,” says Festivals Acadiens Vice President Pat Mould. “It is a new digital world that people are trying to figure out how to navigate, and I knew what I didn’t want it to look like.”

The next step was gathering a team of camera operators, sound engineers, film editors, graphic designers, IT support and marketing experts. FIL was instrumental in figuring out the technical side, especially since Acadiens wanted to broadcast live from several local venues. There was also the challenge of channeling our unique Cajun and Creole culture through a screen, not to mention a hurricane that set plans back a week.

“It took hundreds of hours of work to produce the approximately 10-hour livestream we presented over three days,” says Mould, “but I think we set a new bar for streaming music and cultural content.”

More than half of viewers who tuned into Festivals Acadiens Virtual Edition 2020 lived outside of Louisiana, with fans watching from as far as Japan. Total views on Facebook Live reached more than 70,000 over the weekend, and 80 percent of those surveyed said they would like the festival to have a virtual component from now on. That’s something Festival International is considering as it plans for a blended virtual/live event in 2021.

FIL has already been tapped by New York’s globalFest, Chicago’s World Music Festival and Asheville, N.C.’s Lake Eden Arts Festival for advice on managing a virtual event. Feehan shares some of his best practices and lessons learned below.

5 Things to Know When Planning a Virtual Music Festival

1. Start by mapping out your normal event. Think about what makes it special and think outside of the box to get creative and figure out a way to recreate those aspects virtually—on the screen.

2. Get crazy. Try to do something new and innovative. Take chances and have fun. Forget any rules you thought you had. Your patrons and supporters will appreciate the risk-taking and relate to any imperfections.

Ensure that you have somebody on your team who really understands the technical side of the production. The virtual space is uncharted territory. From content creation to audio/video production, then ultimately streaming to the interweb, there are a lot of technical challenges to be considered.

Go beyond the screen. Try to bridge the gap and form a connection between the viewers and the event. How can they get involved and be a part of the event from home? Whether it’s through user-submitted content or community involvement, immerse the patrons in the experience.

5. Test, test, test. When you go live, the technology has to work and work well.