Beehive Block Party and beyond: SoLa and Live Nation train entertainment's next generation

2 weeks ago 11

In the hours earlier the 5th yearly Beehive Block Party kicked disconnected connected Saturday, the venue was, appropriately, abuzz.

Vendors landed connected the Beehive’s 20,000-square-foot courtyard successful South Los Angeles, filling it with food, creation and secondhand covering vendors. Young radical fluttered about, wearing customized achromatic T-shirts emblazoned with the festival’s retro cartoon-style poster art. Jack McGrail and Aiyana Da’Briel, unit leaders for the SoLa Live Accelerator programme down the event, seemed to beryllium everyplace astatine once, passing retired wristbands and scribbling connected clipboards.

Inside an adjacent gathering known arsenic the SoLa Technology and Entrepreneurship Center, 21-year-old UCLA students and existent SoLa Live participants Audrey Ohwobete and Gladis Verenice Ramírez Veliz were anxious to chat astir the event, which they worked for months to curate.

“Even down to the coloring, the branding — similar orangish and blue, going into that sunset-type vibe,” Ohwobete said. “We’re a cohort of 19, bringing each of our ideas unneurotic to make this infinitesimal and present it’s conscionable similar boom, present we are. You blinked and present you did each of it.”

Every facet of the 2026 Beehive Block Party — featuring soulful octet wst cmplx, jazz creator Veritus Miller and headliner Navy Blue — was planned by their SoLa Live Accelerator group, aspiring unrecorded amusement professionals betwixt the ages of 16 and 22 from South L.A.

Wst cmplx set performs astatine the yearly Beehive Block Party.

The programme is simply a concern betwixt the SoLa Foundation, a nonprofit affiliate of the affordable lodging and existent property concern institution SoLa Impact, and amusement behemoth Live Nation. SoLa runs a slate of youth-focused programming, including the tech halfway and a assistance program.

The unrecorded amusement accelerator started successful 2022 arsenic a 10-week experimentation and has since grown into a six-month intensive programme with play impermanent speakers from Live Nation, which culminates successful the yearly artifact party.

According to SoLa Foundation Executive Director Sherri Francois, the concern was calved retired of a speech with Live Nation Chief Executive Michael Rapino astir the disparity betwixt the percent of artists who were radical of colour and the percent of divers leaders down the scenes.

“He recovered retired astir the enactment that we were doing here, specifically due to the fact that we service low-income, underinvested young adults and youth, who are typically successful our neighborhoods Black and brown. And helium virtually said, ‘We person a pipeline problem,’” Francois said.

Audrey Ohwobete, 21, poses for a photograph astatine the Beehive successful South Los Angeles.

Live Nation does not people a unit diverseness report, but a 2021 survey by the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative recovered that 12.5% of elder managers crossed unrecorded euphony and performance promotion companies came from underrepresented radical oregon taste groups (who comprised 40% of the full U.S. population), and little than 1% were Black. The survey nary longer measures unrecorded amusement specifically, but the astir caller study recovered that radical of colour held 16.7% of elder absorption positions crossed large euphony companies.

The SoLa Live Accelerator programme is geared toward students with a wide array of manufacture interests. Each week, a visiting nonrecreational introduces a antithetic facet of unrecorded amusement — booking, marketing, lawsuit production, venue operations, ticketing, merchandise — which the students past usage to program the festival.

For many, the programme doesn’t extremity there. Live Nation reserves 10 spots successful its competitory internship programme for SoLa Live alumni, meaning astatine slightest fractional of each cohort receives a paid vocation advancement opportunity. Five “top performing” pistillate participants besides get further mentorship from Live Nation Women.

“It’s a testament to the existent enactment of Live Nation, but besides that these kids are ready, and they thrive there,” Francois said.

“That’s truly the extremity — to exposure them, but past truly bid them to win successful these roles,” McGrail added.

That benignant of ft successful the doorway tin marque each the quality for young radical similar Ohwobete and Ramírez, who person originative aspirations but fewer opportunities to recognize them connected a ample scale.

Gladis Verenice Ramírez Veliz, 21, a rising elder astatine UCLA and a subordinate of the 2026 SoLa Live Accelerator cohort.

“Growing up, we were ne'er told you could spell into euphony oregon the amusement manufacture oregon anything. There was nary anticipation successful that,” Ramírez said. “This truly taught maine that there’s a accidental for aboriginal generations, and they’re creating a way for us.

“In this industry, it’s usually connection of mouth. You’ve got to cognize idiosyncratic successful bid to get in, and we don’t cognize anyone astatine all,” she continued. “It’s precise scary that we don’t cognize however to get in, not adjacent into the message room. But here, determination was a accidental for america to get an accidental and travel our dreams and our passions.”

For young radical with akin ambitions, unrecorded amusement could beryllium a astute way to follow. Last year, Goldman Sachs projected that the assemblage would turn 7.2% annually betwixt 2024 and 2030, and successful January, manufacture leaders called a vocation successful unrecorded amusement “recession-proof” successful Bloomberg News, noting that the “aging labour pool” is anxious for caller talent.

For SoLa Live alumni Aiyana Da’Briel and Kyland Talbott, some members of the 2023 edition, participating successful the programme has already paid off. After stints successful Live Nation’s Venue Nation Rotational Internship and Early Career Touring Immersion programs, Da’Briel came backmost to SoLa to assistance McGrail successful starring the program. Talbott, meanwhile, completed his ain Live Nation internship earlier getting the accidental to enactment arsenic a back-of-house adjunct connected Kendrick Lamar and SZA’s 2025 Grand National Tour.

“I had ne'er produced thing oregon had immoderate involvement successful moving with artists and worldly successful a unrecorded setting” earlier joining the program, Talbott said. “But I did emotion going to concerts.”

“Once we did our ain festival, it benignant of reshaped my brain, coming from being successful the audience. I loved it mode much being backmost of location than being successful the beforehand of house.”

A poster astatine the Beehive Block Party reads "Draw Ur Fav Album."

One of the aspects that makes the programme special, Ohwobete said, is however participants support it successful the proverbial family. Talbott was Ohwobete’s freshman residential advisor astatine UCLA and manager of the UCLA Hip-Hop Congress erstwhile she archetypal joined. That transportation exposed her to SoLa, and she hopes to bash the aforesaid for younger members of the assemblage club, of which she is present director.

“By being capable to springiness america this opportunity, it doesn’t conscionable enactment here,” she said. “It goes beyond and beyond to animate much generations. We’re graduating adjacent year, but my nine this year, I’m going to fto y’all know, ‘hey, bash this. Make definite your resume is tight. Make definite your LinkedIn’s updated. Make definite you’re doing this,’ truthful that erstwhile the accidental comes, you’ll beryllium ready.”

Ramírez agreed, adding that the accidental creates a larger concatenation absorption wrong a community.

“I’m the oldest sister of 2 babies, and those are my satellite and they spot what I’m doing,” she said. “I archer them what I’m doing astatine SoLa and they’re precise inspired. Just motivating your household to determination distant from the accepted blue-collar jobs that we’re forced to do. It’s truly beauteous that you tin animate your bloodline and you’re going to alteration your household name.”

Ramírez considered herself 1 of the originative directors of the cohort, masterminding video shoots and making definite their societal media selling stayed accordant with the festival’s branding.

By the clip the enactment was successful afloat swing, with trumpets crooning onstage, hundreds of guests sipping flower-adorned cocktails successful the courtyard and the prima mounting successful the distance, everyone could spot the vision.