Recent News

WDAV Classic Public Radio reports on the 2019 BOOM Festival. Here’s an excerpt:   Manoj Kesavan on the Charlotte BOOM Festival Published Monday, April 9, 2019 8 pm Charlotte BOOM returns to the Plaza Midwood neighborhood of the Queen City for three days of art, performance and the unexpected. The event offers a variety of […]

The Charlotte Post says Boom redefines what art access looks like. Here’s an excerpt:   Festival puts BOOM Into Charlotte’s Artistic Diversity Published Monday, April 2, 2018 12:05 pm by Ashley Mahoney Boom redefines what art access looks like. Charlotte’s annual fringe festival boasts unprecedented diversity because of its open-ended structure. “If it is a […]

April 11, 2018:   Skeptics had every right to expect BOOM Charlotte to implode under the weight of its extraordinary ambitions in 2016. Until then, the city had been as hospitable to avant-garde culture – especially in large quantities – as the Mojave Desert is to monarch butterflies. Yet the festival planted itself in Plaza Midwood […]

BOOM’s Executive Director, Manoj Kesavan, is profiled in Creative Loafing’s “Arts to Watch 2018” edition, on stands the last week in 2017. Excerpt below: “Think of Wikipedia, which started 16 years ago,” Manoj Kesavan says. “If someone told you then that hundreds of thousands of people were going to spend millions of hours sharing knowledge, […]

Creative Loafing says our second BOOM festival and our executive director, Manoj Kesavan, are the BEST OF CHARLOTTE in 2017. Here’s the full writeup:   Best Performing Arts Explosion Last April, BOOM detonated in Plaza Midwood for the second year in a row, unleashing a bigger, brighter fireball of avant-garde and grassroots arts, dance, music and theater. […]

Since 1997, Charlotte Magazine has dedicated its May issue to the BEST OF THE BEST, known as the BOB Awards, which recognizes the city’s finest in food and drink, nightlife, entertainment, shopping, mind and body, and more — hundreds of winners in all. This year the BOOM festival won for the “Arts Festival” category, stating: “For three […]

Creative Loafing reporter Mark Kemp wrote a glowing article about the diversity and inclusivity of the BOOM festival after attending several performances over the weekend. Kemp writes: But the crowd of people who poured into Plaza Midwood last weekend was different. It wasn’t just a rainbow of races, ethnicities and cultures, although that certainly was an […]

The popular Charlotte Five website generated excitement in its readers with this preview of the BOOM festival. Michael J. Solender wrote about the growing diversity of our performers and what’s new this year. Below is an excerpt: An explosion of Charlotte culture comes to Plaza Midwood this weekend as the second annual fringe arts BOOM […]

Creative Loafing writer PAT MORAN interviewed several of BOOM’s producers and partners in this extensive profile of the second BOOM festival. Here is an excerpt: Out of chaos came BOOM! Let me explain. In this case “chaos” means Que-OS, the nonprofit led by BOOM Director Manoj Kesavan, and BOOM is — well, it’s the mother […]

Charlotte Five writer SARAH CROSLAND named BOOM one of the top 10 things you MUST do around Charlotte in April: (10) Soak in the arts scene at BOOM festival. If you’ve ever complained that Charlotte is too mainstream banker-y (that’s a word, trust me), it’s time to let this cutting-edge and experimental festival prove you […]

Charlotte Observer writer LAWRENCE TOPPMAN helped BOOM light the fuse by covering our kickoff party on March 22, 2017: A small explosion rocked Petra’s Bar, the popular Plaza-Midwood joint on Commonwealth Avenue, Wednesday between 6 and 7 p.m. Shortly afterward, as Charlotteans will, people at the club dipped into their wallets and started to contribute. […]

Charlotte Magazine included our festival as part of their Spring Arts Preview for 2017: “Boom Is Back! The artist-run festival BOOM (April 28-30) will utilize several venues in Plaza Midwood—including Petra’s, Snug Harbor, and a makeshift outdoor stage. There will be performances from local and national acts in theater, dance, visual art, performance art, and […]