Music fans fight hunger at Bonnaroo 2011

For the fourth consecutive year, Oxfam America hosted a booth at the Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival. Held in Manchester, Tennessee last weekend, and widely regarded as one of the world’s premier (and greenest) music festivals, Bonnaroo draws approximately 80,000 people from around the world. This year it featured performances by more than 175 artists.

Bolstered by Oxfam-supporting artists on the festival’s bill like Arcade Fire, Explosions In The Sky, G. Love & Special Sauce, Ben Sollee, Mavis Staples, Nicole Atkins, The Decemberists, Deer Tick and Amos Lee, our team of 10 music outreach reps generated support for Oxfam’s new GROW campaign to fix a broken food system.

We even created a fully-set-for-dinner “Table For Nine Billion” in Planet Roo, the area set aside on the concert grounds for non-profits, to allow people to visualize how we can sustainably feed a growing population—complete with menus that served up Oxfam’s five-point plan to respond to the emerging food crisis. By the time the sun set on the last evening of the festival, more than 3,600 people had signed on as Oxfam supporters.

All of it set the stage for the rest of our concert outreach season this summer, where you’ll find Oxfam volunteers at shows by Fitz & The Tantrums, Flogging Molly, Maroon 5, Dave Matthews Band, Ben Sollee, Guster, Ra Ra Riot, and with our music ambassador DJ Shadow on the IDentity Festival Tour.

If you weren’t able to attend Bonnaroo this year but would like to feel part of it all, we can help in a few ways:

• Watch this space soon for video of Ben Sollee’s performance at the Oxfam booth at Bonnaroo.
• Join thousands of music fans and pledge to take action for a future where no one goes hungry.
• Volunteer at a concert with Oxfam this summer. Apply here to be notified of concert volunteering opportunities in your city.