When life throws you lemons, you throw a festival!

The pandemic forced us to think out of the box... literally.

When your entire business model is built off people sitting next to each other in a closed room a pandemic can be a problem. Our leadership challenged us with imagining a way to keep the center alive—keep the arts and the community alive—by using our park and plaza in front of the building as new kind of venue.

This would be an outdoor venue where everyone was a VIP in their own box. You could order food and drinks and relax with your friends in the safe open air. When everyone else was closing their doors, we decided to open ours up.

Working alongside amazing facilities, operations, fundraising and leadership teams, my team—the creative team—was responsible for developing the brand, marketing materials, overseeing environmental design, and guest experience.

If you build it...

Collaborating with entertainment designer Cindy White, we took napkin sketches and photoshop mockups and built over 600 feet of "fence and hedging". Along with custom fabricated food and beverage areas. We had to design custom signage for each box with unique QR codes to create a seamless ordering and delivery method through a customized app. Way-finding signage, in box advertising and on-site partner activations... all had to be thought through and then re-worked and improved as the frontyard ran.

Did we say F & B?

This isn't your typical "festival fare". Yes, we were outside, but the brand of excellence people had come to expect from the Dr. Phillips Center needed to be represented here too. Sure, we had pizza and hamburgers... but they were wood fire pizzas and gourmet burgers from favorite local restaurants that otherwise would've been closed. We also took advantage of the weather and served Sunday Brunch complete with elevated chicken and waffles and bottomless mimosas.

In the end, the Frontyard festival ran for almost a year and not only kept a perfuming art center open and relevant, but gave a community a chance to experience some joy in an otherwise dark time.