It Takes a Village
From the desk of: Courtney DeAngelis
One of the best parts about our job as event planners is having the opportunity to work with so many different vendors and meeting so many people along the way. The events that we have built some of our best vendor relationships with, has been working on projects for DivcoWest. Each summer they host an annual outdoor summer event series in their new community development called Cambridge Crossing. The Cambridge Crossing community, located where Boston, Cambridge and Somerville all intersect, is invited to gather to rejoice and relax at CX Summer Nights, an outdoor festival featuring live bands to listen and dance to, food trucks to fill your belly and lawn games, bubbles, interactive activities for kids and adults, and what seems to be nearly every new puppy in the three cities combined. It takes place on the third Thursday of July, August and September. When we first began producing this event a few years back, we planned for 150 – 300 guests. Now, with the creative and unique experiences we curate for each month, we have exceeded 1,000 guests and have added additional events to their roster, like Cambridge Crossing Movie Nights to accommodate the growing interest!
Because these events take place outside in a public park, there are many more pieces to the puzzle, in order to execute these events seamlessly and with that, come the need for an enormous number of vendors partnerships. Of course, as you may expect, there’s entertainment and food, but there’s any number of other elements that need to be considered and planned for given this outdoor public space. A huge thank you for the support and partnership through the East Cambridge Business Association for helping to rally all the local Cambridge vendors and working to ensure that we have the necessary permitting for things like road closures and the outdoor service of food and alcoholic beverages.
At the start of our planning process, we sit with the client’s internal team to brainstorm ideas about what we want this year’s CX Summer Nights to look like, what sort of music it should feature, and one of our favorite parts is talking about which new food trucks we should incorporate! Next we begin laying out a workable floor plan. Each year the landscape of the park and available space has changed as DIVCO West develops the neighborhood, so we quite literally begin building the plan from Google maps, and quickly followed up by a site visit with our AV team, High Output to see what is realistic for our stage placement, electrical equipment, lighting, backline and all additional AV needs. From there, we move on to walking the perimeter with our temporary fencing vendor, Camelot, since we have to temporarily enclose the space given we have bar service available outside.
While this free event is huge draw for the community, I feel as though the greatest excitement surrounds the live music performances. Families come from near and far to listen to live music and enjoy a free, family and dog-friendly summer night out in the city. CX Summer Nights takes place 3 times throughout the summer, and each event features two local bands, each playing a 90 minute set. Some of our personal favorites have been, Latrell, Oompa, Ali Mcguirk, Other than Boston, Dwight and Nicole and Julie Rhodes.
What could be more important than ambiance and music you ask? Food! We layout a schedule for each event to incorporate many different flavors and styles of food– Asian fusion, Pizza, Mexican, BBQ, Raw Bar and so much more! This year, we began with 4 trucks for the evening and as the event continued to grow, we ended our season with 6 trucks for the night. My sweet tooth most often directs me to visit the dessert trucks like Frozen Hoagies, The Whoopie Wagon and Zinneken's Waffles first, the voice of reason might suggest I visit the delicious offerings from trucks like Bon Me, Tenoch, The Dining Car, Boston Barbecue, Just Wingin’ It, Moyzilla, Bonetown Burgers, Chicken and Rice Guys, Revelry, Sweet Tomatoes and Zaaki BEFORE I eat my dessert!
While we know there is a draw to sit back and relax in lawn chairs and listen to music, we have also found that this audience has enjoyed participating in the activity based trucks we have secured as well. This year, we included a photobooth bus – 77 VW Photo Booth and our plant truck – Boston City Scapes, TransPLANTed Truck for guests to enjoy!
And we wouldn’t be able to show you all these amazing photos if Flavio had not captured them so beautifully.
We are SO grateful to work with so many incredible vendors throughout this planning process for multiple events and we are excited to partner with even more vendors as we begin planning for the 2022 CX Summer Night Series!
