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Music festivals are supposed to be fun, but the abbreviated name of a long-running Indianapolis event may have lacked a sense of energy and good times.
Since its debut in 2002, the Independent Music + Arts Festival on the grounds of the Harrison Center was known to most as IMAF.
“Before I knew about IMAF, I thought it was a standardized test,” said Taylor Solomon, a recent Herron High School graduate and co-coordinator of this year’s event.
Solomon and Grace Graves, who will be a senior at Herron, join a legacy of Harrison Center interns who have coordinated the festival.
They’re the first, however, to guide the event through a rebranding.
The duo worked with the event’s board of directors and Indianapolis-based Matinee Creative to devise the Bloombox name that suggests a music-focused boombox and seasonal blooming.
“We brainstormed with [Matinee principals Matt Gonzales and Amy McAdams-Gonzales] on different names and different brand ideas,” Graves said. “We eventually settled on Bloombox.”
In 2002, visual artist and filmmaker Ray Mills founded IMAF as an all-ages free event with a strong emphasis on local musicians who play original music.
The all-ages, free and original music components continue to be a part of Bloombox, which is scheduled noon to 8 p.m. June 17 on the grounds of the Harrison Center, 1505 N. Delaware St.
The Indieana Handicraft Exchange will extend its tradition of being a complementary event during Bloombox.
Solomon is lining up food trucks to serve customers along Delaware Street, and Graves worked to schedule the 10 artists who will play music on two stages.
One of the Bloombox headliners also is newly rebranded. Shvdy Rollins is the new name of popular R&B-pop band Huckleberry Funk.
Other standouts in the lineup include singer-songwriter Books, rock band Radar Gold, blues-rock musician Sadie Johnson and rapper Seaux Chill.
Emerging artists include Ball State University student KC King and Indiana Wesleyan University graduate Remington Hill.
“It will be really exciting to see all these musicians we searched out perform live for us,” said Graves, who also is a vocalist-guitarist. Graves’ Bloombox bio describes her as a potential future performer at the festival.
Interns coordinate Bloombox through the Harrison’s cultural entrepreneurship initiative.
Moriah Miller, creative engagement administrator at the Harrison, worked with Graves during the process to schedule acts that are accessible for audiences.
“Different kinds of genres are represented,” Miller said. “We try to have things that will be entertaining to watch in a live show without being too specific to any taste or personality.”
Graves said it was gratifying to lock in the lineup.
“We were sitting in the office and we had everything set up,” she said. “I think we started cheering. First you had to pick the bands, and we were trying to get the lineup just perfect. We were going back and forth on who should play when, because some bands had time constraints. It was all these different puzzle pieces to rearrange. There was a sigh of relief when we put it all together.”
Bloombox schedule
Noon: KC King & the Soul Collective
12:40 p.m.: Radar Gold
1:20 p.m.: Namen Namen
2:10 p.m.: Remington Hill
3 p.m.: Books
3:50 p.m.: Antlerhead
4:40 p.m.: Gregorian
5:30 p.m.: Seaux Chill
6:10 p.m.: Sadie Johnson
7 p.m.: Shvdy Rollins
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“… the Bloombox name that suggests a music-focused boombox and seasonal blooming.”
It suggests Boomblox to me.