RVA Mag is thrilled to announce a partnership with Tom Tom Founders Festival in Charlottesville this April 9-15. For those who don’t know, Tom Tom Founders Festival is the largest gathering of “innovators, visionaries, and artists who are shaping small cities,” in the Commonwealth. Like any great event, the festival will bring together musicians, artists, civic innovators, and social entrepreneurs across a series of panels, roundtables, mixers and immersive talks, all of which will utilize various city spaces like theatres, galleries, concert halls, and event outdoor locations.
The festival will bring together over 70 bands, 400 speakers, and community organizations, along with 44,000 program participants. For those who are interested in how music, art, culture, technology, and politics intersect – this is the place to be.
Why is a festival like this important in 2018 and why did RVA Mag choose to partner with Tom Tom Founders Festival? Because in 2018 – as Virginians and Americans – we face unprecedented challenges and complexity which is defining a new era of conversation and politics – one that we are all grappling with. One that focuses on how we can address the challenges of these issues in a way that is not just sustainable but can be addressed locally. And as everyone is coming to realize, the intersection of things like art, technology, culture, and politics is where this change is occurring. RVA Mag believes that all growing cities need to have these conversations as a way to best understand what our future could look like. Articulating this vision will be a roster of keynote speakers like Dan Rather, Bill Kristol, and John Cleese, along with other notable social influencers from various media outlets, tech companies, and civic/academic organizations – all of whom are on the front lines of this cutting-edge change.
During the festival, RVA Mag will be sponsoring the three panels, which we encourage everyone to drop in on: Institute for Contemporary Arts and RVA, moderated by Michael Orlove from National Endowment for the Arts. Sex in Public: The Future of Gender, moderated by Jennifer Wright, author of Get Well Soon and It Ended Badly, along with being a writer for Harper’s Bazaar on feminist issues in the age of Trump. And last, but not certainly not least, After August 12: Freedom of Speech and Domestic Terror, moderated by RVA Mag’s Managing Partner and Editorial Director, Landon Shroder, who spent 13 years working in high risk and complex environments between Africa and the Middle East and is a former intelligence analyst and journalist for VICE Media. This panel will explore the intersection of free speech, growing domestic radicalism, and how that is tenuously balanced against the need for public safety in a political environment that is getting more contentious by the day.
RVA Mag will also be co-sponsoring a happy hour with Tom Tom Founders Festival in Richmond on March 1 at Hardywood in Richmond. You can get your tickets here and come join
