A new event, FREEFEST 2021, will celebrate Black creatives and community builders at a live festival in Domino Park this Saturday, June 19. Programming will include a live marching band, a voter rights fair, roller skating and opera performances, and more.
This year, FREEFEST plans to reshape Domino Park into a space to build community, enjoy entertainment, and honor changemakers shaping Brooklyn and beyond. As the fight against structural racism and inequality in America continues, it’s critical we celebrate and honor the perseverance of Black people in America.
“FREEFEST is a celebration of Black liberation. FREEFEST is also the acknowledgement of what it is to be free in this city and any corner of this country which, historically, has been built on massacre, forced labor, and subjugation,” said FREEFEST founders Ras Dia and Siobahn Sung. The duo are also founders of ffflypaper, a community-centered arts production company. “Through this festival, we have the opportunity to celebrate the joy and resilience that drives Black communities–symbols of authentic American freedom with all of its failings, but beacons of what is possible when we empower people.”
Domino Park, a community space on the East River, is a powerful locale for the event. “Looking to the waters that surround this city, waters that brought some of the first enslaved people to American shores, we are reminded of how we’re connected to this land and its history,” Dia and Sung shared. “In this moment of commemorating Juneteenth we choose to celebrate unmitigated Black joy, hope, expression and community at the congruence of Domino Park; between boroughs; between the vernal and autumnal; between silence and explosive jubilance; between the past and our ever-expansive future.”
FREEFEST 2021 at Domino Park will take place from 4 p.m. – 10 p.m. on Saturday, June 19.