Global Citizen Festival is an annual music festival where fans take actions toward ending extreme poverty in order to earn free tickets. Their festivals bring together Global Citizens, artists, activists, world leaders, philanthropists, corporate leaders, and more, with one collective mission: End Extreme Poverty NOW.
// 2022
// Festival
// Accra, South Africa and New York City, USA.
We are proud this year to have continued our relationship with Global Citizen by designing the two live shows across the world. One show in NYC and one in Accra, Ghana.
As of October 2022, the Global Citizen Festival Campaign Culminates in $2.4 Billion to End Extreme Poverty.
The design of the shows frames the performers in the context of the site. Multiple performance stages, catwalks and presenter areas created a dynamic performance space and immersive audience experience.
New York
The New York show celebrated its 10th anniversary at Central Park this year, and featured performances from Metallica, Charlie Puth, the Jonas Brothers, Måneskin, Mariah Carey, Mickey Guyton and Rosalía, and hosted by Priyanka Chopra Jonas.
The design had multiple stages; the main stage, the side stages and the Skyline stage.
The Skyline Stage to capture the beauty of more intimate performances frames against the iconic NYC skyline, as the sun set and the city lit up, the background transformed. This circular stage was in amongst the audience, and provided a different platform to the main stage performances. The side stages provided a space for speeches and other spoken word presentations.
A new, curved thrust stage added a dynamic extension to the stage that allowed performers to break the 4th wall and come into the audience more. Together with the skyline stage and 2 side stage presenter areas this show offered the most amount of variation for the speakers, performers to be seen on stage.
This year’s main stage set was completely reused and repurposed from a combination of the 2021 NYC and Paris stages to give a fresh yet sustainable twist for the 2022 show. The side stages were made in an inherently recyclable material. Stufish worked with a local New York nursery to provide 60 tree saplings for the organic backdrop, which will be replanted across the city.
As with 2021, the set also featured 100 tree saplings. This year introduced an additional 20 larger young trees that will be plated in central park as a reminder of GC’s support of plating 1 billion trees.
Accra
The Accra show was held in the Black Star Square. The design was a based on a standard festival roof structure, but turning the mundane stage roof design into a bespoke look. Large, printed banners and a multitude of colourful flags gave the design a light and airy festival feeling that worked well in the breezy context of Black Star Square facing the Indian Ocean.
The Global Citizen Iconic red circle was incorporated in the stage floor as well as on the Black Star monument visually linking the event to the show in Central Park New York.
Colourful banners that incorporated the Ghanaian Black Star into the Red circle was recreated as 3d scenery and proved to be a vibrant backdrop to the key presenter positions. The coup de theatre of the design was framing the Black Star Square monument as the backdrop to all the performances on stage, given the event the contextual focal point and anchoring it unequivocally to Ghana and Africa.
