Tickets are still available to the 2015 IU Block Party, which will feature a carnival and concert, via the IU Auditorium website.
The carnival will kick off the Block Party at 5 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 22, and is scheduled to end at 8 p.m. Doors for the concert will open at 6 p.m. The concert is expected to conclude the Block Party at 1 a.m.
Though this is the third year Welcome Week will feature a concert, this is the first year it will feature a carnival, as the carnival last year was canceled because of rain.
“The carnival is going to be great,” said James Diamond, Union Board director of music, adding students will find food, rides and games.
The Block Party is part of a campus-wide effort to provide alcohol-free events and safe environments, particularly during students’ first college weekends, Diamond said. Union Board and the Office of First Year Experience worked together to bring the Block Party to Welcome Week.
“There’s a lot of work that goes into planning the Block Party, and there are a lot of different university organizations involved,” he said. Residential Programs and Services and the Residence Halls Association provide funding and publicity, and Union Board books the artists.
Diamond said Union Board’s primary goal was to bring in more genres, straying from the hip-hop artists recently found at the Little 500 and Welcome Week concerts, so they brought in a pop act, an alternative act, a rap act and an electronic act.
“We try and pull what we think the students want,” he said. “This year, we went for a blend of a lot of different genres. That was our main focus — try and hit as many different genres of music as we can so that we could hit the widest appeal of students.”
Representatives from Union Board, RPS and RHA first make a list of possible artists and then check their availability, Diamond said.
“There are a lot of European shows and festivals going on in late summer, so availability wasn’t always there, but a lot of times we were able to choose who we had initially gone after,” he said.
Diamond said he thinks the carnival and the concert are great ways for students to meet people during their first week of college.
“Welcome Week, in general, is where you meet a lot of the friends that you’ll have for the rest of at least your college experience, if not the rest of your life,” he said. “Music has always been something that has brought people together. That’s kind of cliché, but it’s true.”
