HEAD OF EXPERIENTIAL & BRAND STRATEGY INTEGRATION

SOMETHING IN THE WATER

Pharrell Williams’ annual music festival and cultural experience kicks off a five year residency in DC on Juneteenth weekend, 2022. s part of our partnership with the District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS), XQ partnered with Pharrell Williams and the city to celebrate DC’s high school graduates during the Something in the Water (SITW) music festival. The festival coincided with: Juneteenth and graduation season, giving us an opportunity to honor the class of 2022 and engage with the DC community. XQ gifted over 3000 festival passes to DC public school grads, and Pharrell even recorded a personalized video congratulating them.

At SITW’s community engagement activity, we hosted a Student Roundtable with DCPS students. We also stood up a free DC+XQ community market next to the festival where we brought together 25+ local entrepreneurs, artists and performers. More than 5200 people browsed the community market during the two-day festival, allowing us to place the DC community at the center of the celebration.

ART & ACTIVISM CHALLENGES

XQ launched launched a series of art and activism challenges to provide youth ages, 13-21 an opportunity to express themselves creatively and learn from practitioners who use their art as a form of activism. Our first challenge was with Oakland based musicians, SOL Development, visual artist Brandan “BMike” Odums and dancer, Misty Copeland.

XQ
YEARBOOK

The XQ Yearbook is designed to bring high school students, teachers, community stakeholders and the public together in celebration of the class of 2020-2021, created by XQ Institute in partnership with renowned artist JR and his global participatory art project, Inside Out.