Lehigh University’s University Productions programs music, comedy, events, and excursions for 5,000 students.
What is your Program Board’s mission?
UP Music is Lehigh University’s student run entertainment and social programming board. Our goal is to organize music-related events and concerts that cater to the student body’s current music preferences, as well as exposing them to new, up-and-coming artists and genres. We aim to give students a place to come together to celebrate music and try to give exposure to many student artists and groups by giving them a platform to showcase their talents to their peers. We always make sure to have Lehigh students as opening acts for our big-name concerts to give them a chance to shine.
What tools do you use internally to communicate and keep everyone on the same page?
We use GroupMe and text messaging for day-to-day communication, Google Drive for organizing documents and files, as well as email to communicate with the school, artists, and other parties involved in putting on the show.
What kind of activities do you do as a board to promote team bonding?
We bond as a team over obsessively checking the weather for several weeks leading up to our shows, as well as watching Planet Earth films. On top of that, we’ve all been very close for several years now through our work with UP Music before we became Directors, so when we took on this leadership role together, it felt very natural and we get along and work together extremely well.
What is your largest event of the year?
Our largest event of the year is our Spring Concert, which has traditionally been called Quest for many years now. It usually takes place during the last week or two of classes, which we think is a great way for students to have some fun and let out their stress at the end of the year before finals. We allocate most of our budget towards this event and aim to bring a lineup that the entire student body can get very excited about. For a few years, the event was held at an off campus location, but we brought it back onto campus this past spring to have a larger venue where more students could experience the event and enjoy the festivities. We also made it a point to lower ticket prices to make the concert as accessible as possible to more students, which turned out to be a big success with a sold out show.
If a TV show was created based on your program board what genre would it be and what would it be called? Why?
If a TV show was created about us, it would be a sitcom called “Ride(r) or Die”.We like to think we’re a pretty funny group of people – we always make each other laugh, at least, so we think we would make a good sitcom out of the adventures and banter that comes along with planning the Lehigh concerts. We love a good artist rider as well, so we came up with a pun.
Keep up with University Productions on Instagram: @uplehigh