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It’s officially here: the 50th year of Movin’ On!
For 50 years members have been working throughout the entire school year to bring the student body a memorable end of year concert.
Movin’ On has hosted artists like JID, Dayglow, Jack Harlow, Lil Yachty and Sexyy Red.
Many don’t know how much work goes into creating the festival, what each part of the organization does, how long it takes, or how Movin’ On actually gets artists.
Bridie Lawall, current Executive Director of Movin’ On, walked me through every step of the planning process.
It starts the year before when the new Executive Board is announced late spring semester the year prior.
From there the summer is filled with a lot of preplanning tasks preparing for the fall semester show in collaboration with Student Programming Association, Lights Up.
Lights Up is a collaborative concert held by both Movin’ On and SPA. Both groups coordinate space, artist, security, promotional tasks, equipment, technology and manpower.
In addition to this, Lawall said she spent a lot of the summer doing more mundane things that many people wouldn’t consider.
This included booking meeting spaces, coordinating with the University Park Undergraduate Association, Association for Residence Hall and SPA students to pick liaisons, securing access to office space and planning Movin’ On’s booth during the Involvement Fair.
Once the fall semester begins, after the involvement fair, Movin’ On opens its applications for the CORE team. After those close applications for the promotion team then begin.
The promotion team, “PROMO,” is essential to the workings of Movin’ On. They do load in and out for battle and work closely with the artists that are brought to Penn State.
When these application processes are over, it is typically late October and then bi-weekly, weekly in the spring, CORE and PROMO team meetings begin.
During these meetings members learn about the different aspects of putting on a show like Movin’ On and get weekly updates from the Executive Board.
The Executive Board consists of the executive director, senior director, director of events, creative directors, director of public relations, director of sponsorship, director of production, director of operations and the liaisons.
Under each of these directors is anywhere from 5-10 people on their team (though the size varies depending on team needs). Combine this with the PROMO team, it’s clear Movin’ On is a massive group effort with many moving parts.
During the fall some of the planning tasks that are completed are equipment rentals, coordinating with police and safety officers for road closures and security, securing sponsorships, planning events like Acoustic Roadshow, submitting budget requests, solidifying dates for events, working on brand awareness and working with other student organizations to plan events.
That brings the organization to spring, where everything moves quickly. This is when Movin’ On has Battle, lineup and the actual festival.
Battle is a show put on in Schwab Auditorium, where six to eight student acts perform for an audience along with an elected panel of judges to compete to open for Movin’ On.
Battle is a concert, so it has many of the aspects that Movin’ On does with promotion, load in and load out. Along with the added component of picking which bands to play.
During this whole process the Executive Board is working on securing the line-up for the festival itself. They determine which artists are the best fit and appeal to students.
Which brings us to Lineup release, where students, along with the CORE and PROMO teams, get to finally hear who is coming to Movin’ On that year.
Then, it is just a short amount of time until the actual concert comes together.
For three days leading up to the concert all members of Movin’ On work together to build the entire concert area from the ground up, and then work the event from start to finish.
The minute the last performer walks off stage, they then get right back to work taking everything apart and loading it back into the trucks, this can go until the early hours of the morning, with work finishing on the IM Fields at about 4 am.
This is a very simplistic rundown of how Movin’ On is put together.
Overall, it takes the hard work and dedication of many students, the support from the university and our advisor, the companies who sponsor the event and, of course, every student who comes out and has an amazing night at Movin’ On.
Without all of these different entities working seamlessly together and everyone involved, Movin’ On wouldn’t be one of the largest student- run music festivals in the country
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