Winning Festivals

We've scaled successful festivals and worked on industry-leading teams, attaining the experience, knowledge and network to guide your team.

Experience

Festival Consulting

From ideation to acquisition, we’ve navigated every crossing on the festival development journey. As your festival consultant, we help your team navigate critical decision making, providing valuable resources and relationships, so you can lead and succeed in a competitive industry.
Forecastle Festival:75,000 reached

Branding

Branding is your DNA. It differentiates and distinguishes. The creation of a unique, distinct, and proprietary brand identity is the cornerstone of an instantly recognizable festival.

Budgeting

From permits to power, mapping to medical, catering to concessions, all bases must be covered to deliver successful festivals. Budgets easily exceed when wants overwhelm needs, and as your festival consultant, we provide clarity and counsel.

Staffing

Team is everything. From booking to accounting, marketing to management, networking to risk management, festival staffing is a critical piece of festival development. You can’t afford to have the wrong people in the wrong place.

Programming

Proportioned ingredients create the perfect recipe, and successful festivals feature the right mix of talent, activities and attractions. Our veteran festival consulting team provides a creative and data-driven equation to the formula, and process to procurement.

PR & Marketing

Designing your dream is one thing, selling it is another. As your festival consultant, we help design a festival marketing strategy and public relations plan, deploying the right content at the right time, and measuring it with real-time data analytics.

Sponsors & Partners

Festival sponsors and strategic partners are one of your most valuable revenue streams. Our festival consulting team has designed and delivered over 350 brand partnerships, with expertise on assets, valuations, sales tools, presentations, brand activations and other festival sponsorship essentials.

Ticketing

Closing patron commitment early and consistently is a critical component to creating successful festivals. We guide clients through the crowded landscape of ticketing vendors, pricing strategy, data-driven technologies and more.

Concessions

One of the “Top 5” features that make or break any festival experience, festival concessions are a recipe of brands, products, pricing and locations that must be strategically curated. As your festival consultant, we help you formulate the perfect mix of F&B offerings.

Production

Successful festivals are designed like well-architected cities. There is math and science to everything you need, where you need it, and how much you should pay for it. With 20 years of festival development experience, we know how to help your team plan what it needs.

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Case Studies

We’ve spent decades in festival development creating experiences that foster genuine connection. We know the best festivals and what makes them succeed, and as your festival consultant, have the expertise to guide your team.

Twenty One Pilots performing at Forecastle - a downtown Louisville festival with a unique music.art.activism® brand identity
Forecastle Mast Stage :::15,000 reached

Forecastle

Mission:

Music.Art.Activism®. Founded by Art of Impact's JK McKnight, Forecastle launched 2002 inside Louisville’s award-winning Olmsted park system (Central Park, Biltmore Estate, US Capital), was one of the first contemporary music festival models to make sustainability a core pillar of its DNA, shifting the industry flywheel towards a more socially-conscious, environmentally-friendly direction.

Strategy:

Start small, dream big. Place music, art, and activism on equal footing, investing in each equally. Think differently. Focus on creating experiences you would not find in a traditional festival environment, merging education and entertainment, while weaving in local culture. Create an authentic, immersive environment where the culmination of experiential brand activations and locally-sourced micro experiences forged a distinctive identity and stimulating journey of artistic and cultural discovery.

Results:

Forecastle scaled quickly, as did its environmental Foundation, drawing audiences from over 2400 cities and 13 countries, and featured an eclectic mix of artists, including The Black Keys, Jack White, Beck, Sam Smith, Outkast, LCD Soundsystem, Arcade Fire, Chris Stapleton, My Morning Jacket, Sturgill Simpson, and over 500 more. It outgrew five venues on its way to 85-acre Waterfront Park: the largest and most scenic outdoor venue in Louisville, KY. From 0 to 75,000 attendees, the smallest city park to one of the largest, the festival was acquired by AC Entertainment in 2013 and Live Nation in 2016.

Experience It
High Water in N. Charleston, SC - a riverfront festival experience featuring music, culinary and brand partnerships
High Water Festival :::12,000 reached

High Water

Mission:

Bring Charleston, SC’s storied history and southern culture to the music festival masses. A two-day waterfront celebration of music, food and libations, curated by homegrown artists Shovels & Rope and featuring purveyors of Carolina lowcountry cuisine and culture.

Strategy:

Focus on sense of place. Understand what makes Charleston unique and distinct, and showcase it with creative freedom. Feature a world-class lineup that highlights its flavorful food, handcrafted libations, philanthropic passions, and colorful artistic visual art. creating experiences anchored by native culture bearers like Band of Horses (music), Rodney Scott (culinary), Garden & Gun (lifestyle), and more. Art of Impact’s JK McKnight used his experience in festival sponsorships and strategic partnerships to facilitate impactful brand partnerships that add value to the patron experience by delivering unique sets of locally-grown micro-experiences with festival sponsors like Lagunitas, Tito’s, Four Roses and many more.

Results:

Delivering on our brand promise with an eclectic menagerie of lowcountry culture and cuisine, High Water checked all the festival essential boxes and sold out in its debut at nearly 10,000 patrons per day. It went onto become a staple of the southern festival circuit, merging history, heritage, music, arts, culture, camaraderie and hospitality in a beautiful waterfront setting that attracted fans from 45 states, 5 countries, and nearly 1500 cities.

Experience It
Moogfest at the Thomas Wolfe Auditorium in Asheville NC, a music festival creating experiences honoring Bob Moog’s legacy
Moogfest :::10,000 reached

Moogfest

Mission:

Celebrate the enduring legacy of American entrepreneur and innovator Bob Moog – creator of the Moog synthesizer – and redefine what a music festival could be. Blend technology, arts, and education to create experiences the New York Times would label an epicenter of “untamed sounds” featuring “electronics that stimulate ears and emotions.” Riding a wave of renewed interest in the analog synthesizer, Moogfest would be a celebration of sights and sounds tucked inside the beautiful mountains and scenic outlooks of western North Carolina.

Strategy:

Activate a creative array of commercial and mixed use spaces throughout downtown Asheville, NC on Halloween weekend (Bob Moog’s adopted hometown). Deliver a genre-bending, instrument-blending assortment of Moog-influenced exhibitions and performances. highlight technology that captures the spirit of Bob Moog and the massive influence his inventions inspired. From the Beatles and Beach Boys, to Brian Eno and Kraftwerk, Flaming Lips to MGMT, the Moog synthesizer is a staple of contemporary instrumentation. Make Moogfest the melting pot of his work and global fanbase. Art of Impact’s JK McKnight was privileged to work on a multitude of foundation laying facets, including community relations, festival sponsors, brand activations, artistic installations, hospitality and other festival essential amenities.

Results:

Fans and artists from around the world descended upon Asheville, NC, to pay their respects to one of the world’s breakthrough icons. Artists from DEVO to Kraftwerk, innovators from Keith Emerson to Orbital, and composers like Terry Riley and Gary Numan, with contemporary pop stars like MIA, GZA, Moby and more. Drawing over 7,500 fans per day to the scenic, mountain home of Bob Moog, Moogfest was hailed by NPR as “One of the most eclectic festivals in the country” with additional accolades by the New York TImes, Wall Street Journal, and many more.

Experience It
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Why It Works

GEN Z AND MILLENNIALS

Festivals have experienced a worldwide surge in the past decade, and Gen Z data suggests the trend will continue climbing. Millennials and Gen Z share a strong affinity for social, shareable, sensory experiences that festivals deliver more than any other experiential platform.

PASSIONATE AND ENGAGING

Festivals capture passionate fans in a contained environment of shared values and common interests, opening the door to a unique and unprecedented level of engagement.

Social and Stimulating

Festivals provide a social, stimulating platform to reach, inspire, shape and mold audiences. A unique environment where the presence of sponsors is perceived as positive, and advertisers are not perceived as advertisers.

Topical Tech

New festival technologies are being developed to augment the industry. As your festival consultant or producer, we assure your team is able to capitalize. Physically and virtually, festivals will remain a driver of our creative economy, culture, health and well-being.

"JK is a visionary, strategist and tactician. His Forecastle Festival was a national leader in merging business with philanthropy and community benefit, always including the ROC (return on community) to the ROI. He sees the potential of any festival clearly, crafts a potent strategy, and is an effective leader building a team who tactically can reach any goal."

:: Gill Holland | Entrepreneur | Community Builder