SoLa and Live Nation train entertainment's next generation

In the hours before the fifth annual Beehive Block Party kicked off on Saturday, the venue was, appropriately, abuzz.

Vendors landed on the Beehive’s 20,000-square-foot courtyard in South Los Angeles, filling it with food, art and secondhand clothing vendors. Young people fluttered about, wearing custom white T-shirts emblazoned with the festival’s retro cartoon-style poster art. Jack McGrail and Aiyana Da’Briel, staff leaders for the SoLa Live Accelerator program behind the event, seemed to be everywhere at once, passing out wristbands and scribbling on clipboards.

Inside an adjacent building known as the SoLa Technology and Entrepreneurship Center, 21-year-old UCLA students and current SoLa Live participants Audrey Ohwobete and Gladis Verenice Ramírez Veliz were eager to chat about the event, which they worked for months to curate.

“Even down to the coloring, the branding — like orange and blue, going into that sunset-type vibe,” Ohwobete said. “We’re a cohort of 19, bringing all of our ideas together to create this moment and now it’s just like boom, here we are. You blinked and now you did all of it.”

Every aspect of the 2026 Beehive Block Party — featuring soulful octet wst cmplx, jazz artist Veritus Miller and headliner Navy Blue — was planned by their SoLa Live Accelerator group, aspiring live entertainment professionals between the ages of 16 and 22 from South L.A.

Wst cmplx band performs at the Beehive Block Party by the SoLa Foundation and the SoLa Live Accelerator Program at the Beehive in South Los Angeles.

(Ariana Drehsler / For The Times)

The program is a partnership between the SoLa Foundation, a nonprofit affiliate of the affordable housing and real estate investment company SoLa Impact, and entertainment behemoth Live Nation. SoLa runs a slate of youth-focused programming, including the tech center and a scholarship program.

The live entertainment accelerator started in 2022 as a 10-week experiment and has since grown into a six-month intensive program with weekly guest speakers from Live Nation, which culminates in the annual block party.

According to SoLa Foundation Executive Director Sherri Francois, the partnership was born out of a conversation with Live Nation Chief Executive Michael Rapino about the disparity between the percentage of artists who were people of color and the percentage of diverse leaders behind the scenes.

“He found out about the work that we were doing here, specifically because we serve low-income, underinvested young adults and youth, who are typically in our neighborhoods Black and brown. And he literally said, ‘We have a pipeline problem,’” Francois said.

Audrey Ohwobete, 21, poses for a photo at the Beehive in South Los Angeles.

Live Nation does not publish a staff diversity report, but a 2021 study by the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative found that 12.5% of senior managers across live music and concert promotion companies came from underrepresented racial or ethnic groups (who comprised 40% of the total U.S. population), and less than 1% were Black. The study no longer measures live entertainment specifically, but the most recent report found that people of color held 16.7% of senior management positions across major music companies.

The SoLa Live Accelerator program is geared toward students with a wide array of industry interests. Each week, a visiting professional introduces a different aspect of live entertainment — booking, marketing, event production, venue operations, ticketing, merchandise — which the students then use to plan the festival.

For many, the program doesn’t end there. Live Nation reserves 10 spots in its competitive internship program for SoLa Live alumni, meaning at least half of every cohort receives a paid career advancement opportunity. Five “top performing” female participants also get additional mentorship from Live Nation Women.

“It’s a testament to the true support of Live Nation, but also that these kids are ready, and they thrive there,” Francois said.

“That’s really the goal — to expose them, but then really train them to succeed in these roles,” McGrail added.

That kind of foot in the door can make all the difference for young people like Ohwobete and Ramírez, who have creative aspirations but few opportunities to realize them on a large scale.

Gladis Verenice Ramírez Veliz, 21, a rising senior at UCLA and a member of the 2026 SoLa Live Accelerator cohort.

“Growing up, we were never told you could go into music or the entertainment industry or anything. There was no hope in that,” Ramírez said. “This really taught me that there’s a chance for future generations, and they’re creating a path for us.

“In this industry, it’s usually word of mouth. You’ve got to know someone in order to get in, and we don’t know anyone at all,” she continued. “It’s very scary that we don’t know how to get in, not even into the mail room. But here, there was a chance for us to get an opportunity and follow our dreams and our passions.”

For young people with similar ambitions, live entertainment could be a smart path to follow. Last year, Goldman Sachs projected that the sector would grow 7.2% annually between 2024 and 2030, and in January, industry leaders called a career in live entertainment “recession-proof” in Bloomberg News, noting that the “aging labor pool” is eager for fresh talent.

For SoLa Live alumni Aiyana Da’Briel and Kyland Talbott, both members of the 2023 edition, participating in the program has already paid off. After stints in Live Nation’s Venue Nation Rotational Internship and Early Career Touring Immersion programs, Da’Briel came back to SoLa to assist McGrail in leading the program. Talbott, meanwhile, completed his own Live Nation internship before getting the opportunity to work as a back-of-house assistant on Kendrick Lamar and SZA’s 2025 Grand National Tour.

“I had never produced anything or had any interest in working with artists and stuff in a live setting” before joining the program, Talbott said. “But I did love going to concerts.”

“Once we did our own festival, it kind of reshaped my brain, coming from being in the audience. I loved it way more being back of house than being in the front of house.”

A poster at the Beehive Block Party reads "Draw Ur Fav Album."

One of the aspects that makes the program special, Ohwobete said, is how participants keep it in the proverbial family. Talbott was Ohwobete’s freshman residential advisor at UCLA and director of the UCLA Hip-Hop Congress when she first joined. That connection exposed her to SoLa, and she hopes to do the same for younger members of the college club, of which she is now director.

“By being able to give us this opportunity, it doesn’t just stay here,” she said. “It goes beyond and beyond to inspire more generations. We’re graduating next year, but my club this year, I’m going to let y’all know, ‘hey, do this. Make sure your resume is tight. Make sure your LinkedIn’s updated. Make sure you’re doing this,’ so that when the opportunity comes, you’ll be ready.”

Ramírez agreed, adding that the opportunity creates a larger chain reaction within a community.

“I’m the oldest sister of two babies, and those are my world and they see what I’m doing,” she said. “I tell them what I’m doing at SoLa and they’re very inspired. Just motivating your family to move away from the traditional blue-collar jobs that we’re forced to do. It’s really beautiful that you can inspire your bloodline and you’re going to change your family name.”

Ramírez considered herself one of the creative directors of the cohort, masterminding video shoots and making sure their social media marketing stayed consistent with the festival’s branding.

By the time the party was in full swing, with trumpets crooning onstage, hundreds of guests sipping flower-adorned cocktails in the courtyard and the sun setting in the distance, everyone could see the vision.

Crowd at the Beehive Block Party in South Los Angeles.