Lisa La Rocca

This break out session will cover challenges, opportunities, and problem solving advice for working with local businesses in planning street festivals and other urban events. It will cover how to get local businesses to participate in your event, problems that may arise, logistical issues with street closures and other considerations when hosting an event in a location with active business. I will reference my experience with the Supercrawl festival in Hamilton, as well as various other street festivals I have worked on within my 15 year career in events.

Outcomes:

1) Opportunities for partnership with local businesses during street festival plannings.

2) Logistical issues and challenges that may arise while planning a street festival or urban event and how to problem-solve them.

3) Unique aspects and considerations of street festivals/urban events compared to other types of events.

BIO:

Lisa La Rocca is Director of Operations at independent record label and events company Sonic Unyon Records in Hamilton. She founded the Fresh Up R&B Fest in 2022 and leads logistics on other Sonic Unyon produced festivals Supercrawl, Because Beer, Why Not Wine, as well as many other third party events including Hamilton Canada Day, Grey Cup Festival (2024/2022), Junofest (2022/2015), and Pan Am Games Hamilton (2015). Lisa is currently chair of Hamilton’s Music Advisory Team, a member of the Hamilton Arts Advisory Commission, serves as a board member of the Hamilton-Halton-Brant Regional Tourism Organization and the Downtown Hamilton BIA. She was the music sector representative on the Mayor’s Taskforce for Economic Recovery in Hamilton, and in 2022 spearheaded the Music Cities Forum and Hamilton Music Business Study alongside Sound Diplomacy and other partners in the city. She is a part-time PhD student in the Communication and Culture program at York University with a focus on Popular Music Studies, and holds an M.A. in Communication and New Media from McMaster University.