The Student Assembly for Gender Empowerment’s FemFest 2024, as in previous years, would have been a “counter-patriarchal” student-run music festival at USC, amplifying the voices of women, people of color and those in the LGBTQIA+ community.

Then came the rain.

Now, after being forced to shut the festival down at the last minute, FemFest staff are reflecting and planning on the next one, while also reeling from the outstanding costs they’re still obligated to pay despite the cancellation.

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Alexandra Abrams, who joined the FemFest staff as co-executive director for the 2023-24 school year, was one of the handful of students directly involved in the cancellation. Abrams said their biggest hardship before the cancellation was McCarthy Quad being closed for a period of time, creating an overall tough year for FemFest. 

“We had to think pretty creatively about how to find a new space on campus to have our show,” said Abrams — a senior majoring in arts, technology and the business of innovation. And their options were “pretty limited.”

It cost more for SAGE staff to switch to a different area, Abrams said, as they had to pay for generators and labor to build the stage. Then, a week before the show, incoming weather forecasts led staff to create contingency plans, but the production vendor ultimately deemed conditions unsafe shortly before the show was set to begin.

“We were told that we had to make the call by noon on the day of the show,” Abrams said. “So around 11:30 [a.m.], one of the production vendors, their head for our show, came and told us, ‘I just don’t see this being a safe situation for anybody to continue on with the show.’ So that was when we decided to pull it.”

Abrams said the initial next steps were to inform all parties involved and students of the cancellation, but in the aftermath, they are dealing with possible refunds for services that weren’t rendered. 

“It’s not really losing [money]; a lot of the money was spent already in the sense of production,” Abrams said. “Because of the contracts, we have to pay them out, because [artists] were willing and able to pay.” 

Abrams said their next steps are to build out “transition docs” to prepare incoming directors to throw the next FemFest show. Abrams explained that the FemFest staff has to discuss what their future FemFest will look like as well as detailed locations.  

“We’re just giving a lot of notes of things that we did this year that would say either to definitely do or not do for the following year,” Abrams said. 

Abrams said the FemFest staff also needs to think of additional ways to get the FemFest name out there, so that students are aware of it for next year.

Sophia Lynn, a sophomore majoring in music industry, joined the FemFest crew this year as co-experience director. She said the festival being canceled deflated a lot of people’s spirits — especially those at the FemFest hospitality committee, which “hustled and hustled” to arrange the food trucks and food for the artists — as there was no real solution to the unexpected weather.

“If there’s no event, then the production doesn’t really amount to anything,” Lynn said.

Lynn said the non-seniors in FemFest have had a “flame ignited” since the cancellation and want to work on bringing the festival back to its full extent. 

Shiloh Gonsky, a junior majoring in music industry and FemFest’s co-finance and sponsorship director said the staff had supported each other throughout different stages of the planning process this year.  

“I really love knowing that the work that I was doing was being seen by all the other committee[s] and executive directors,” Gonsky said. 

Gonsky was charged with meeting all the vendors and sponsors to help them set up their booths. That also meant she had to tell them the show had been canceled.

“I wasn’t really sure what was going to come out of reimbursing for any of the donations they made or the sponsorships they made,” Gonsky said. 

Gonsky said she felt personally responsible for the vendors and sponsors, as they were no longer able to promote their organizations. She said the cancellation felt “surreal” because the FemFest staff wasn’t sure until the morning of the show if FemFest would be able to happen.  

“We ended up all meeting up at night and having a party and a funeral together,” Gonsky said, “just so we could celebrate the work that we put in over the year.”

Gonsky said the FemFest staff is thinking of doing more damage control planning and weather planning for next year’s festival. 

“I definitely would like to figure out some way to do some more programming,” Gonsky said. “Just to kind of spread the world and see if people who are interested in FemFest can have more opportunities to be involved.”