Solar Fest made its return to the Keene State campus for the first time in six years on Saturday, May 3, with a day of live music, free food and student organization tabling.
The event, which was hosted collaboratively by student organizations WKNH and Eco-Reps, was originally scheduled to take place outside but was forced to move into the L.P. Young Student Center with forecasted rainy weather.
Despite this change of plans, the festivities still went on indoors. The day began with an appearance and short speech from KSC President Melinda Treadwell. Following this, four local acts took the stage to perform in the Night Owl Café while representatives from student organizations tabled below on the student center’s first floor. The acts who were featured during the festival included Mr. Bill’s Bluegrass Band, Coffin Flop, Stagnox and HELIXX.
General Manager of WKNH, Treasurer of Eco-Reps and senior Ryan Rotigliano described the event as “a concert setting, but with a solar backbone and discussions about climate change and some alternatives to traditional ways of doing things.” He also mentioned that the festival would have been entirely powered by solar panels if the weather conditions had allowed.
Ryan Rotigliano said he was the main advocate for bringing the Solar Fest back to KSC, describing it as his “passion project” over the last year.
“It’s important because it blends a lot of things together,” Ryan Rotigliano said. “This is a way to promote not only local bands, but also alternatives to traditionally running concerts, and we can present this as an opportunity to propose new ways of doing things, renewable ways of doing things. The idea of getting local bands and this local solar company that we were going to work with creates this system of positive and green style.”
“I’ve been the driving force around this event,” he added. “It’s been my main focus point this whole semester.”
Junior and Productions Manager of WKNH Patrick Garcia said that WKNH was responsible for coordinating the music and tech side of the event. In his role as productions manager, he said he did a lot of work with the tech team.
“[The] productions manager here at WKNH works with tech, so I have a large tech background and I’ve acted as the line of communication between the tech team working on the concert and the group here coordinating the bands,” Garcia said.
Garcia said that one of the biggest challenges that came up for the tech team was the number and variety of musical acts that they had to prepare for.
“We’ve never done four bands in one day in the student center. It’s always been at most two, so just preparing for four bands of very different genres, it’s rock, grunge, bluegrass and EDM,” Garcia said. “The challenge was making the preparations tech-wise for all of those, since they all have very different requirements and building them all into the small mixer that we have, it’s not really built for big concerts or music festivals like this. But we’re problem solvers, and we found a way to make it work.”
Junior and President of Eco-Reps Amanda Rotigliano said Eco-Reps did a lot of the behind-the-scenes planning for the event.
“I did a lot of the background planning of helping do promotional posters and making sure that clubs and orgs who wanted to table got the information and helping do a lot of the big promotional side of things, and then some of the more behind-the-scenes work of sending emails to our members and making sure that they knew all the information for the event,” Amanda Rotigliano said.
Amanda Rotigliano said the aspect of the event that she was most excited about was the musical performances.
“Our headliner, Mr. Bill’s Bluegrass Band, is a really fun band. They play at Brewbakers and our Eco-Reps e-board last semester went to go see one of their shows, and they’re so fun and amazing,” Amanda Rotigliano said. “I’m so excited for the students to get to hear some different, more local bands that they may be able to go see downtown for free or for not a lot of money.”
First-year student Sofia Hayward attended the event and said the bluegrass band was her favorite part of the festival, saying, “They’re really cool, and the audience is very captivating along with the band.” Hayward also said that she would be excited to see the event return in the future.
Sophomore Sammi Goldblatt, who participated in tabling during the event for the Make-A-Wish Club with one of the most decorated tables in the student center, talked about what the organization’s message was with their table.
“Make-A-Wish New Hampshire in the summer puts on a giant event called ‘Rafting for Wishes,’ so our whole e-board, we’ve all dressed up as a dad beach vibe and we got a bunch of floats and everything,” Goldblatt said. “We’re just raising awareness of our club, and also we have a donation if people want to donate to rafting.”
Goldblatt said she was excited about the Solar Fest event and the environment that it brought to campus.
“It’s a really cool opportunity to come back, and I also think it’s nice how some of our orgs are tabling and we have music going and it’s just a great environment,” Goldblatt said. “Sometimes there’s not this type of chill, hangout environment in events like this. It’s nice because Pumpkin Palooza and Student Involvement Fair are very intense, so just relaxing and having fun is another nice way.”
Ryan Rotigliano said he enjoyed getting to be a part of an event that was a collaboration between multiple organizations, especially considering his involvement in WKNH and Eco-Reps.
“It’s been really fun, actually. I think something that always goes underutilized on campus is organization collabs. You can get a lot from both orgs if you decide to collab on something,” Ryan Rotigliano said. “It was really fun to be able to talk to multiple people and get multiple perspectives, and also it’s just exciting to see collaboration become a thing here at Keene State.”
Amanda Rotigliano also said they enjoyed getting the opportunity to work with other organizations.
“It’s really nice to collaborate with WKNH. They’ve been really onboard with helping us get this back up and running, and I know for tabling we’ve been reaching out to a lot of the student orgs and we partnered a little bit with some members of Art Collective to help design our posters and stuff,” Amanda Rotigliano said. “It’s been really nice to get to know the campus community as a whole and bring together a bunch of people who are interested in bringing this event back up and making it this big thing on campus for students to enjoy.”
Garcia said that he loved seeing the collaborative aspect of the event and the precedent that it has set, especially coming amongst a tough time for student organizations on campus.
“I love seeing a lot of club synergy on campus, especially in recent times where budgets are getting cut. It’s really nice to see other clubs uplifting each other and helping to fill in the gaps left behind by budgeting issues and things like that,” Garcia said. “I’m not only really happy that this collaboration is happening, but I think it’s also setting a great example for future clubs and future students to be able to do the same thing.”
Ryan Rotigliano expressed hope the Solar Fest will be an event that will continue in the future and discussed some of the plans that the WKNH e-board has in mind for next year.
“I’ve already talked to the WKNH e-board about it next year and they’re all super onboard with it. They were really excited about this year,” he said. “They’re even starting to put together ideas for next year, including working with the Student Activities Council to put on a bigger headliner but still have the solar aspect of things. Hopefully the weather works out and you can have the bigger headliner and student bands as openers and you can kill two birds with one stone, spring concert and Solar Fest.”
Despite the unexpected turn caused by bad weather, Ryan Rotigliano said the excitement that was shown toward the Solar Fest’s return makes him confident that the event has a future at KSC.
“The higher-ups at the school were excited. Some professors I talked to, in and outside of the environmental department, remember when this was an event and were really excited to see it return,” he said. “I’m hoping that future years can build off this excitement and the professors and faculty can help make it the best event it can be in the future.”
Justin Dearborn can be reached at
