A MESSAGE FROM THE FOUNDER
Today we’re announcing the 12th Annual Tom Tom Festival, April 17-21, 2024. Our April celebration of music, art, and ideas connects Charlottesville over a magical week to imagine a brighter tomorrow.
This year our theme is TOGETHER.
It’s all about our interconnection, and our shared future. This April, amidst the fun, connection, and synchronicity, we’ll join forces, work collaboratively, bridge divides, and start to dream some new dreams for our hometown.
TOGETHER starts now. The Festival is the pinnacle of a year of planning and collaboration with hundreds of local organizations, artists, and visionaries. We’re community-planned and community-powered. Please consider this your invitation to co-create Tom Tom with us.
The Future Starts with Us.
With a name that means TOMORROW TOMORROW, we naturally believe in the Future. Tom Tom runs on an ethos of big ideas, big dreams, and big action.
Our theme is TOGETHER because we’re optimists; we believe we need each other to thrive, and that connection is possible. We see the interconnection in our community across class, race, and life experience. If we build relationships, a deep sense of belonging can be cultivated here in Charlottesville.
That said, our theme is TOGETHER because although these ideals of connection are uplifting, they are not always easy. We are individuals with real differences. We do not always share the same frame of reference or perspective. We do not always agree.
TOGETHER is important for us as individuals, our community, and even our democracy. Study after study shows increasing feelings of loneliness and isolation across our society, accompanied by negative health consequences. We also see the polarization in our politics and public discourse. These twin trends speak to an urgent need: How can we bridge divides, expand beyond our default ways of thinking, and increase understanding?
We see the Festival as a unique opportunity to try this out. It’s a moment in our civic imagination when we hit pause on the normal day-to-day, and start talking about our shared future.
We chose TOGETHER because it is both a challenge and an aspiration for our community. Can a Festival help build the trust and connection that will allow Charlottesville to flourish?
Let’s Co-Create the Festival
With our TOGETHER announcement, we’re launching the first round of our Community Partner Program. This annual initiative invites local organizations to tell Charlottesville’s story through their unique vantage point.
This co-creation and collaboration is essential, because it invites engagement throughout the city, and puts ownership squarely in the hands of the visionaries and leaders who are shaping our community. Last year, collaborators shared experiences at local jails, barbershops, public parks, tech incubators, libraries, art galleries, and coffee shops.
If you’ve got a new initiative you’d like to showcase, or a workshop, talk, concert, performance or open house you’d like to contribute; please bring it to the party!
We are also opening a series of Public Interest Meetings in October and November to spark conversations and get ideas brewing for the Festival. These sessions include a presentation on the Festival and Theme, but are primarily designed to connect attendees and start the process of co-creation.
We’d like to know; What are the topics and conversations you see driving this shared future? Who are the leaders, teachers, artists, healers, and entrepreneurs you see showing the way? How would you bring them forward to the community?
So let’s do this!
Let’s show up with open minds and hearts
and co-create something magical.
A lot can happen in our community:
TOGETHER
Tom Tom Foundation
paul (at ) tomtomfoundation.org