Our Mission
The mission of the Freedom Festival is to create opportunities for people of all walks of life to invite one another to experience, celebrate and advance what freedom and independence means to them.
Our Values
The Freedom Festival recognizes that people have different experiences of access, privilege, oppression and freedom. This is part of our collective histories. It is our history. The festival is our social experiment in creating new celebrations with our pain and joy. We are removing barriers between us through finding ways to celebrate together. Small local steps are part of our national and international landscape.
Our Vision
Our vision is to fulfill Opal Lee’s dream and respond to her call to celebratory action. We’re continuing the grassroots, neighbor to neighbor, local and national movement that celebrates the full commitment of the US to emancipation, Juneteenth, and to independence, July 4th.
Event Founders & Partners
Meet Raquell
Dr. Raquell Holmes is a builder of innovative programs that bring people together across traditional boundaries. She founded improvscience in 2010 as part of an international community of educators, trainers and researchers who use play and creativity to address educational and humanitarian needs in the world.
Holmes uses her training in human development and performance to build developmental, collaborative environments. In May 2020, in response to her scientific colleagues' requests for help to contribute to the Black Lives Matter movement, Raquell created Uncomfortable Independent Conversations (UIC). In the UIC, individuals come together and build conversations that move them closer to one another’s different experience of race and class in the US.
Without yet knowing the significance of June 19th, UIC was started on Juneteenth of 2020!
Learning of Opal Lee’s call for celebration of freedom from Juneteenth to Independence Day, Raquell responded, Yes! Yes, let’s! Reaching out to everyone she knew (similar to her call for the UIC), she invited folks to “bring their stuff” to the creation of a national festival that celebrates and explores freedom and independence.
Jacqueline Grace Hayward, MA
What a joyful, creative way to unite with others for freedom!
Dr. Jessie Fields M.D.
Associate Professor of Medicine and Medical Education Mount Sinai Doctors Faculty Practice. Harlem physician, community organizer, activist and poet.
Omar Ali
Professor of Global African Diaspora History and Dean of Lloyd International Honors College, University of North Carolina at Greensboro.
Andy Anderson, Jr
Architect, educator, volunteer, always building community with people to create a better world for all.
C. Meranda Flachs-Surmanek
A theater artist and urban planner, working with people to create environments where we can discern the world as it exists and feel inspired to spark changes, translating our reality into a vision of what it can become.
Jennifer Teig von Hoffman
Continually inspired by freedom and justice.
Makaila Benson
Aesthetician. Pushing for radical change, until "radical change" is no longer necessary and dignity for everyone is the norm.
Jennifer Bullock, M.Ed.M.L.S.P., LPC
Social wellness and voting rights advocate.
Rachelle Moore
Alchemist, therapist, creative improviser building community with people to create a better world for all.
Shirley A. Avilla
MBA Operations and Materials Mgmt. Celebrating everything that connects all people!
James Newman
I'm Jim a Free soul who believes in fairness and justice and it's the difference that makes this world beautiful. Every person we perceive is just a walk of life we don't live is my perspective. I Like the sun rose in the east and have set in the west (grew up in New York and live in California.)
Amaya Yoshikawa
Proud Freedom Builder advocating for Health Equity and Environmental Justice
Nicholas Gross
Passionate educator and physicist, inspired by freedom and individualism.
Sean Garrett
We ordinary people are doing extraordinary things together!
Joanna Wheeldin
Multi-Media Artist, Community Builder, Communicator, Activist Through Joy. A.A. Natural Science, A.A. Humanities, A.A. Arts.
Our Location
There is no one locale for the Freedom Festival. It is celebrated in festival hosts’ venues across the U.S. and beyond, from east to west, north to south. We meet there, in our own communities, at in-person events, or come together in a global community via social media platforms. Our beautiful planet, Earth, is where we all live together. Let's make it work!