Music lovers gathered at Dunn Meadow throughout the day Saturday for the 40th anniversary of the Culture Shock music festival. With the 60-to-70-degree temperatures, around 400 people attended the outdoor music festival. Blankets scattered the meadow as people settled in for the full day of music.
Hosted by WIUX student radio, the annual event has been a staple of the Bloomington music scene for 40 years, providing the community with opportunities to get outside and hear music from local musicians. This year's lineup, which spanned from noon to 9 p.m., included eight different musicians, including one singer from Australia.
Hatchie, the Australian alternative and indie musician, headlined the show with an energetic final set as the sun went down. She played a mix of slower and fast paced songs, with many tracks coming from her most recent album, “Liquorice,” which was released in 2025.
Although the musician came a long way for the show, she drew a large crowd up in front of the stage. Within her Culture Shock set, some of the fan favorite songs were “Carousel” from her most recent album and “The Key” from her second album, “Giving the World Away.” The songs drew a loud applause from the audience and prompted many to move toward the front and dance.
IU senior Daisy Spalding, who attended Culture Shock for the first time, was one of Hatchie’s longtime fans in the audience. She said she’s been listening to her for around five years now.
“I saw that Hatchie was performing, or headlining I guess, and I’ve enjoyed her music for a while, so that was definitely the draw to get me to come out,” Spalding said.
She said she was impressed with all the organizations and vendors like IU Cinema, which Spalding volunteers with, that came to the event too.
In addition to the eight performers that took the stage, Culture Shock included booths surrounding the area for guests to browse. Many of the booths featured secondhand clothes or jewelry, but there were also merch booths for Culture Shock, WIUX and some of the festival’s musicians.
With WIUX hosting the event, many members of the student organization were in attendance and have been a part of the preparations.
Sophomore Erin Mooney, who has been part of WIUX for two years now, said although she didn’t help organize the event, her and other members of the organization helped with tasks like creating the banners hung around the event. She said they started planning this year’s Culture Shock right after last year’s ended. There is a lot of little work that goes into it, she said, which is why it takes so long to plan.
Mooney was at the event all day and heard all eight of the musicians. Two standouts for her were Wishy, an indie alternative band based out of Indianapolis, and Hatchie. She said during Wishy’s set, which was two sets before Hatchie’s, people even began moshing, which is high energy dancing where participants jump around and against eachother.
Mooney said being part of WIUX meant listening to Hatchie on repeat in order to prepare for the event.
“We’ve known that Hatchie was the headliner for a few months now, so we’ve been pushing that on everyone,” Mooney said. “Everyone in WIUX was like ‘Listen to Hatchie, get to know her music,’ so that’s what we did.”
Another student who came to the event for the first time this year was sophomore Leah Mercho. She was encouraged to attend through her boyfriend who is also a part of WIUX.
Mercho said that with everything she has going on in school, it is sometimes easy to feel isolated, but events like Culture Shock help her find time to see her friends and feel the community around her.
“Sometimes it can feel like there's really one brand of person at IU, but this showed me how there’s so many communities here with so many different passions and things that they like to do,” Mercho said. “It was just really nice to see all these different people coming together for this.”
The various artist, ranging from local Bloomington groups to Hatchie all the way from Australia gave audiences a diverse selection of music and with free admission, the event drew more than just IU students to Dunn Meadow. Many families attended Culture Shock as well.
“I think music should be accessible to everyone,” Mooney said. “People can come and spend as little time as they want or as much time, and it’s free, and I think everyone should be able to go and see live music.”
Editor’s note: The IDS was a sponsor for this year’s Culture Shock. The IDS marketing team was not involved in the reporting or editing of this story.
