2025 Band Interest Form

Greetings, dear bands, from the Somerville HONK! Committee!

We are in the process of organizing a very special event, the 20th Anniversary of HONK! Given the fraught political turmoil we have been witnessing this year, it couldn’t come at a more important moment. We have been in many conversations about the need to make connections, the need for safety, and the need to stand up for the preservation of democracy and the rule of law. We believe that a convergence like the HONK! Festival might be in a unique position to provide much needed moments of joy, comfort, humor, relief, connection, and community, while being ever mindful of the need for education, creativity, tactics, strategy, organization, resistance, and protection. In this, there are no spectators. We are all participants.

This year our application is a little different. In addition to providing for all the usual HONK! activities, we also want to gauge interest in expanding the festival schedule possibly adding Thursday to the festival schedule to include activities that will help the members of the HONK! community explicitly support each other. Ideally we would like it to be a response to the current situation in an organized, sustained, and effective way that lasts over the long haul after the festival ends.

In an effort to help us with the very difficult task of selecting bands to attend our festival, we are asking you, via the attached form, to let us know of your interest and availability to attend HONK! 2025.Filling out this form lets us know you are interested in being invited, it does not guarantee we will be able to invite your band (we are not able to invite every band every year). We do our best to stagger invitations and to be as inclusive as possible.

HONK! takes place this year October 9-12, 2025.

Please submit the form below by May 1st, 2025. We will endeavor to let bands know about their application by July 1st, 2025.

For those unfamiliar with this festival, here is some pertinent information:

The HONK! Festival is a gathering of activist street bands. We play for the public, and we play for each other. We gather as a community to exchange ideas and music, and we collaborate on political actions during the festival. These have included playing outside the county jail in Boston and protesting low-wage jobs with local labor union activists in food courts and retail locations. Our annual parade brings together many community folks working on a range of issues regarding social justice and environmental causes and we try to pair these groups with bands based on shared interests.

We give priority to bands with an activist mission at their core and who are working to support their communities through music. Participating bands are our partners in making the festival a success and for building a national and international community of engaged musicians contributing to civil liberties, human rights, and social justice through music.

We are an all-volunteer organizing committee. We provide food, and community volunteers generously host visiting musicians in their homes. We raise funds so we can contribute toward bands’ travel costs.

With the help of public health experts, HONK! has developed COVID protocols (spelled out below) for band members attending our festival. Please review them before applying. If you have any questions, please feel to contact us. If you feel that any of your band members would be unable or unwilling to comply with these protocols, and you would not be ok with attending the festival without them, please do not apply.

Please fill out the application below and feel free to tell us anything we didn’t ask about your band that you want us to know in the additional information field at the bottom. If you know of other bands who would be a good match to our festival, please feel free to forward this application to them as well. Thank you!

HONK! COVID protocols

HONK! is a community and our COVID protocols derive organically from our ethic of mutual care. The HONK! community believes that we as a community are equipped to keep each other safe. We love you all and want to keep everyone safe to the best of our ability! To do this, we are asking for each participant to follow these COVID protocols which have been shown to be effective for minimizing COVID transmission risk.

Pre-festival Expectations
In order to minimize the COVID risk at the HONK! festival, we ask that participants consider the following best practices for the ten days before their arrival at HONK! Each person should minimize potential COVID exposure in the ten days before the festival by avoiding going to unnecessary indoor or crowded events and masking at necessary indoor or crowded events. Please mask while traveling on public transportation and while traveling to the festival (and on your way back is best practice too). If you are experiencing COVID or flu-like symptoms, test, and consider staying home even if testing negative. The new variant does not always register positive on at home antigen tests; if you are symptomatic, you should stay home unless you receive a negative PCR test. If you test positive, please do not come to HONK! even if you are asymptomatic.

Testing
All participants of HONK! (band members, HONK! volunteers, etc.) are expected to take a rapid test before the first HONK! event they are attending. We will have a limited supply of tests for those who feel sick (or find out belatedly that they were exposed to someone who tests positive). If you test positive, please do not come to HONK! even if you are asymptomatic. If someone tests positive at the festival, see below protocols.

Masks
Masks will be required for everyone in HONK! indoor spaces except when a person is eating, drinking or playing a horn. HONK! will have masks for people who need them.

Vaccination
It is our expectation that all HONK! participants will be vaccinated. We understand that there may be individuals who are unable to get the COVID vaccine for medical reasons (such as a severe allergy to the vaccine or one of its components) and we would allow them to come with certain additional protocols.

If your band member fits into that medical exemption category, then the following additional protocols would apply if they were to come:

1. The unvaccinated person should test daily starting the day before coming to HONK!
2. The unvaccinated person should also be wearing a mask at all times indoors and strive to eat and drink out of doors as much as possible.
3. HONK! also will be unable to provide housing for any unvaccinated people.
4. If the unvaccinated person gets any symptoms—regardless of test status, we ask that they cease to attend HONK! events.

What if someone tests positive at the festival?
If you test positive regardless of whether or not you have symptoms, you must quarantine from
HONK!. Quarantine means no HONK! performances and no attendance at any HONK! events. If someone starts to feel sick, they should test immediately and consider going home if possible. If someone tests positive, you cannot remain in HONK! volunteer housing. The best plan and our assumption is that you will go home and take care of yourself. If you are unable to get home immediately, you will move to a quarantine space that we will have. We ask that you inform your bandmates so they can shift into daily testing.

HONK! community must follow the appropriate protocols in order to in compliance with the State of Massachusetts guidelines and guidelines from the city of Somerville; obviously this plan will adjust if those guidelines or conditions change.