At most music festivals, we’ve develop into conditioned to count on strains longer than airport safety, phases crammed tighter than rush-hour subways and dancefloors on asphalt tons. We Belong Right here flips every of these issues on their head.
By designing festivals round seamless entry, spacious dancefloors and scenic venues, the boutique pageant model is elevating the bar for the dwell music expertise.
“It’s referred to as dance music… you must be capable of dance,” Justin Dauman and Charles Hochfelder, the co-founders of We Belong Right here, inform EDM.com.
The duo grew disillusioned with the state of dance music a couple of years in the past. They observed that their associates, who liked going to exhibits, stopped going as a lot as they grew older. “Why does somebody who liked Extremely after they had been 18 not return 5 or 10 years later?” Dauman puzzled. “It’s not that they don’t love music anymore, however issues like getting smushed in a crowd matter extra.”
The COVID-19 pandemic, Dauman mentioned, was the turning level: “After each of us misplaced all of our work on this business throughout the pandemic, we didn’t wish to soar again in until we had been doing one thing significant.”
The duo evaluated every part they didn’t like concerning the dwell music expertise and launched We Belong Right here to rectify the largest ache factors they discovered. Their core precept was that their occasions must happen in distinctive areas. “We do landmarks, naturally scenic settings, or locations which have historic significance,” Dauman explains. “We’re uninterested in going to exhibits in warehouses and parking tons.”
In October 2021, We Belong Right here held its debut occasion inside the previous New York Inventory Alternate constructing, remodeling its historic marble halls right into a membership night time with MEDUZA. From there, they’ve continued to decide on venues with character.
In New York, that meant Pier 16, the oldest lively pier within the metropolis providing sweeping views of the New York skyline; and Governors Island, a former navy base turned nationwide park with the Statue of Liberty as its backdrop.
In Miami, they’ve introduced their flagship annual music pageant to Historic Virginia Key Seashore Park, a waterfront oasis with panoramic views of the Atlantic Ocean; and held occasions contained in the historic Alfred I. duPont Constructing, town’s solely Artwork Deco skyscraper in-built 1939.
Whereas most organizers pack venues to the brim, Dauman and Hochfelder deliberately undersell tickets relative to venue capability. “We genuinely simply wish to make the attendee expertise as nice as attainable, generally to a fault the place financially it doesn’t make sense for us,” Hochfelder says.
Their 360° stage idea—artists acting from the center of the group with none LED partitions—turns the outsized dancefloor right into a circle of shared power with room to bop and sight-lines in each route.
All of those are measures aimed toward constructing a way of neighborhood that impressed the identify We Belong Right here. “For those who really feel such as you belong someplace, you don’t wish to go away,” Dauman and Hochfelder imagine. “And that’s one of many largest emotions we hope to provide all of the attendees.”
They imagine that belonging isn’t one thing you possibly can slap on a flyer. “The identify isn’t a gimmick,” Dauman asserts. “We even restrict how usually our brand seems onsite.”
As an alternative, it’s about “getting the little issues proper to make sure each attendee is a VIP.” That interprets to quick strains for drinks and clear, air-conditioned restroom trailers as a substitute of grim porta-potties.
“The extra time that you simply spend ready for one thing, the extra a 10-minute dialog with a stranger turns into a serious inconvenience,” Dauman explains. “But when every part is handy and easy, you don’t really feel rushed. You’re feeling relaxed and open-minded to satisfy new folks.”
In addition they provide loads of shaded lounge areas with daybeds, cushioned seating and quiet corners, giving revelers significant methods to recoup between lengthy stretches on the dancefloor.
A lot of their design philosophy comes from their love of home events. “Everybody at a home occasion was form of a buddy of a buddy indirectly, even in case you didn’t know them, even in case you didn’t have an curiosity in speaking to different folks, you continue to felt such as you had been at one thing that was a neighborhood,” Dauman and Hochfelder mentioned.
However whereas home events usually include the chaos and rowdiness of youth, We Belong Right here isn’t chasing that power. As an alternative, they’re centered on designing occasions for a “mature viewers.”
Most music festivals are both 18+ or all-ages. We Belong Right here occasions are strictly 21+. “Maturity isn’t nearly being older,” Dauman expands. “It’s about the place you’re in life. We’re not right here to evaluate individuals who simply wish to occasion and get wild—however our power goes into creating one thing for individuals who need music, dancing, and neighborhood to be a part of their lives long-term.”
In observe, this doesn’t imply door insurance policies or concrete methods to curate the group. As an alternative, they imagine that each one the rules they construct their occasions on will create a domino impact of individuals self-selecting themselves into the mature viewers We Belong Right here goals to domesticate.
“I believe we realized we had been onto one thing after our first Miami pageant in 2022,” Hochfelder recollects. “We had been getting so many compliments on the group. Particularly on Reddit, which is a brutal place, so Redditors can be cutthroat in the event that they didn’t resonate with We Belong Right here.”
That validation gave them the boldness to scale on their very own phrases. Over the previous 4 years internet hosting exhibits and festivals in Miami and New York, Dauman and Hochfelder have resisted the temptation to develop too quick. They’re continuously weighing easy methods to broaden with out sacrificing the intimacy that defines We Belong Right here.
“It’s a problem we’re battling each single day,” Dauman admits.
Because the workforce grows, they’ve made a degree of bringing in individuals who first skilled We Belong Right here as followers. “Every thing we did to get Miami off the bottom is now the accountability of somebody on our workforce who’s really captivated with it,” he explains about their hiring practices.
Balancing development with intimacy additionally means drawing boundaries on scale. “We don’t wish to be Extremely or Coachella dimension,” Hochfelder says. “We’d relatively broaden to extra cities than do bigger-sized occasions. When you hit over 30,000 folks, it’s a lot tougher to regulate the standard.”
That “mixture of being affected person however resilient” is what led to their three-day boutique pageant in Central Park final yr. “If we had a really particular timeline that every part needed to occur by, it wouldn’t have occurred. However we had been useless set that if we had been going to do one thing in New York, it wanted to be really particular and distinctive.”
Initially deliberate for 2023, they needed to push again their timeline a full yr to fine-tune their execution and decrease exterior dangers and stress. “It’s arguably essentially the most well-known park on this planet, we needed to be very meticulous and cautious,” Dauman says about constructing the operational muscle on the degree Central Park demanded.
When it lastly happened in 2024, their takeover of Central Park’s storied Wollman Rink was a roaring success. That includes headliners like Kaskade, FISHER and Monolink in addition to native expertise like Ria Mehta, Shahar and Stello, the curation suits We Belong Right here’s ethos of “mixing ‘business’ and ‘underground’ artists in a tasteful manner that appeals equally to the seasoned fan of dance music and people with no prior attachment to the style.”
Credit score: We Belong Right hereAfter proving a dance music pageant might thrive in Central Park, Dauman and Hochfelder are bringing We Belong Right here again to Wollman Rink subsequent weekend for one more three-day takeover. This yr’s headliners embody Lane 8, Porter Robinson and Nora En Pure.
However the return to Central Park is barely half the New York story this yr. For the primary time, We Belong Right here is increasing throughout the river with a Brooklyn debut in Greenpoint, turning the neighborhood’s waterfront into what they describe as an oasis.
Not like the Central Park lineup, which largely options melodic home, the Greenpoint lineup has a unique theme every night time. Friday kicks off with a “high-energy begin to the weekend” led by SIDEPIECE and Gordo. Saturday shifts gears right into a “experience by way of indie and experimental sounds” with Elderbrook and MGMT. And Sunday closes with a journey “rooted in deep sounds and emotional builds” from Franky Wah and Carl Cox.
Nevertheless, for Dauman and Hochfelder, essentially the most rewarding a part of operating We Belong Right here isn’t sold-out exhibits or big-name bookings.
“Having the ability to present alternatives on our workforce for individuals who actually need it—and provides them a platform to make the scene higher—that’s essentially the most rewarding half,” Dauman says. “I understand how arduous it’s to interrupt into this business, even simply making an attempt to get an internship is so tough.”
It’s the serendipitous moments on the finish of a pageant weekend for Hochfelder. “Normally on the finish I get fairly emotional,” he gushes. “I look out and suppose, how on earth did we do that? Seeing folks off the dancefloor with their arm round their associate or simply sitting with associates and laughing, it’s indescribable, I’m even getting just a little emotional simply excited about it.”
Get tickets for We Belong Right here’s New York occasions right here.
