Inaugural South by South Orange Festival (June 26 – 28, 2015), Celebrating “Creative Collisions”

Seton Hall University and the Village of South Orange have jointly announced the inaugural Creative Collisions: South by South Orange Festival (SOxSO), to be held at venues in downtown South Orange, including South Orange Performing Arts Center (SOPAC) and several restaurants, from Friday to Sunday, June 26 – 28, 2015. SOxSO will feature 12 creative and interactive sessions, 15 musical performances and TED-style talks by Seton Hall professors and community authors, artists and celebrities. A “Creative Midway” of participatory happenings and community art projects will take place at Spiotta Park. Considered the first such festival in New Jersey, “Creative Collisions” focuses on the intersection where art, music, ideas, education and technology meet and the creative explosions that come from collaboration and improvisation.

At a news conference on the Seton Hall campus, Michael Zavada, Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences said the project reflects a new level of engagement between the University and Village, together building a learning community, a “Communiversity.”

“Seton Hall is engaged with South Orange. This is our home,” Zavada said. “The timing of the festival in the summer will allow Seton Hall community members to mingle and participate with the community-at-large in a fun and engaging atmosphere, opening doors for more conversations and collaborations between our communities. Service to the residential, professional and municipal communities of which we are a part is an important component of our work, and our participation together is an example of how this can take place anywhere in the world.”

Festival founder and South Orange Village Trustee Stephen Schnall said the theme of the first-ever festival draws on the community’s strengths.

“Creative Collisions is a natural theme for South Orange, where so many different types of people, ideas and sensibilities collide every day to make something incredibly wonderful,” said Schnall.

The Festival, which also received significant financial support from Peco Foundation and Saint Barnabas Medical Center, launches at 6 p.m. on Friday, June 26, with Tech(ing) Ball at SOPAC, a ground-breaking interactive experience involving jazz musicians and software developers as they create music and write code, side-by-side, improvising with each other, live, and resulting in the design of an app to benefit South Orange. The headline concert on Saturday will feature local artist Mike Griot, Will Calhoun, the drummer from Living Colour, guitarist and vocalist Tomás Doncker, Django-guitar jazz artist Stephane Wrembel, harmonica master David Barnes, Vivian Sessoms, international beatbox champion Adam Matta, and a special appearance by reggae ambassadors KIWI, featuring talent from the world-famous Wailers and others. Griot promises a “sensory experience” that covers a wide variety of musical genres.

Among other programming, Seton Hall professors Mark Svenvold and Fortunato Battaglia will offer a conversation collision with poet Gary Glazner called, “The Practical, High-demand, Healing Powers and Neuroscience of Poetry and Visual Art,” David Brancaccio, host of public radio’s business program Marketplace, will conduct a session on “Dumb Money Mistakes,” and actor and screenwriter Richard Stephen Bell will present on “Art of Story in the New Digital Universe.”

Saturday’s programming is scheduled from 10 a.m. to 11 p.m. and Sunday’s events run from noon to 5:30 p.m.

Visit the South by South Orange website [https://soxso.org/] for tickets and a full schedule of events, and join the fun on Twitter with the hashtag #soxso2015.