Neil Young, Foo Fighters, Black Keys Head to Central Park for Global Festival
Global Festival, which will be held in New York’s Central Park later this year, is shaping up to be one of the most exciting shows this year with its lineup of Neil Young & Crazy Horse, Foo Fighters and the Black Keys. It is also one of the most unique.
The charity concert, which will be held September 29, is designed to urge people to take action against extreme poverty around the world before a big event brings problems to the forefront of our attention. Though 54,000 tickets will be issued for the concert, they are not for sale – fans must earn their ticket through a special lottery.
The way this works is that people earn points for performing charitable acts through the Global Citizen website, which is presenting the concert. Points are earned through actions like posting on social media sites, signing a petition and donating to charity, among other things. Organizers hope the event will encourage fans to take 100,000 actions by the time the concert is held in September.
“I think what’s exciting is all the world leaders are going to be in town that week for the United Nations meeting,” organizer Hugh Evans, of the Global Poverty Project, told the Huffington Post. “And this concert and the associated campaign will give us the opportunity to ask these world leaders make practical and tangible monetary commitments to the world’s poor and to the achievement of the UN’s Millennium Development Goals.”
Patrick Carney, drummer for the Black Keys, also spoke to the Huffington Post about the event.
“The scale of things that they’re trying to do just felt really cool, and we’re trying to get the ball rolling,” he said. “Especially with everything that’s been going on for the last three years, I suppose, after the stock market crashed. There’s attention on the amount of people living below the poverty line and the disparity between the rich and the poor and everything that’s going on now… It just felt like the right time to do something.”
