INTERVIEW: Philly's Sweet Juice Fest Makes Quantum Contact

Sweet Juice is a collective of artists and changemakers dedicated to sparking community action through immersive musical experiences, radical creativity, and joyful connection. Our events go beyond performance—they are invitations to engage more deeply with one’s own liberation, inspiring casual music-goers to become active participants in their personal and collective healing. By weaving together artists, activists, and local organizations, we strengthen the connective tissue of Philadelphia’s creative communities. Through collaboration and shared expression, we harness the transformative power of music and art—fortifying the meaning and magic of sound while creating spaces where performers, audiences, and change agents can share, experiment, and imagine new possibilities together.

Co-founders Mel Harris, Katie Hackett, and Shona Carr dug deep to teach us about how they created the festival, and the magic behind Philly's music scene. This year's lineup features Speedy Ortiz, Shy Godwin, Fist City, and many more! The festival will take place on June 28th at Awbury Arboretum. Learn more here and buy tickets here.

Organizing a festival is a big undertaking. What made you want to take it on?
Sweet Juice was born out of necessity—both personal and collective. As artists, we were tired of navigating exploitative or exclusionary music spaces. We wanted to create something that celebrated our whole selves: our sound, our joy, our politics, our weirdness. We were dreaming of a festival that felt more like a family reunion, a ritual, a block party, and a portal—all at once. And instead of waiting for someone else to make it, we decided to build it ourselves. We didn’t start with a huge budget (read: any budget at all) or sponsors—we started with deep love for our community and a wild idea and it’s exactly that community and their willingness to love and support us back that made it possible to both dream and then execute.

Philly is home to lots of great venues—how'd you end up picking Awbury Arboretum?
Well, Awbury is magic. It’s a lush, open space tucked right in Germantown, and it feels like it has its own pulse. Being surrounded by trees and open air helps dissolve some of the rigid boundaries that can come with traditional venues. People move differently in a meadow than they do in a club. We wanted to invite people to breathe, to sprawl out, to dance with their feet in the grass. Plus, Awbury’s commitment to community access and ecological stewardship aligns beautifully with our values around justice and communal care. We have immense gratitude for Kiersten Adams and the team at Awbury. It’s because of Kiersten that Awbury knows who we are and this partnership was formed!

Philly is also home to the most exciting indie artists of the last decade and change (I'm biased because I went to Haverford.) What is it about the city that makes it such a wellspring of creativity?
Philly doesn’t make it easy—but it makes it real. Artists here are scrappy, collaborative, and deeply embedded in their communities because many of them were born and raised in Philly or in nearby cities. There’s this beautiful overlap between activism, art, and mutual aid that fuels a kind of creativity that’s not just about expression—it’s about survival and connection. Also, it’s affordable enough (for now) that some (not all) can take artistic risks without immediately being priced out. There’s grit here, but also deep warmth and weirdness. It’s the kind of city where your favorite DJ might also stock community fridges on the weekends and also be the person who helps you move a couch.

How did you arrive at Sweet Juice’s mission? How would you describe the queer music scene in Philly?
We arrived at it by living it. For years, we were performing, organizing, showing up for each other’s events—and noticing what felt good, and what didn’t. Sweet Juice emerged from that lived experience, and from a shared refusal to separate artistry from care, or celebration from strategy.

The queer music scene in Philly is raw, radiant, and deeply intertwined with reciprocal care. It has given us a home to experiment and live beyond what we’ve been taught is possible. At its core, Sweet Juice believes that creative practice is a vital tool for liberation, and we learned that from our artist and organizer peers. We treat imagination as a kind of ancestral knowledge—a compass that helps us remember our interdependence, our autonomy, and our power to shape what comes next. We're inspired by artistic anarchy, by people making something out of nothing, by the joy of doing things your own way with your people and then allowing that energy to spread like water into the darkest corners of one’s own life as well as our collective grief.

What should we expect from the show?
Expect to laugh, cry, and let the sunshine in! Sweet Juice is a love letter to Philadelphia as well as to the Art Gods. You'll find incredible live sets, immersive art, drag, dance, and ritual. You might be welcomed by a cheer squad or pulled into a moment of stillness under a tree.

This year’s theme, Quantum Contact, invites us to explore the possibility of connection beyond the physical realm. You may even have the chance to send a message into the Unknown and/or receive wisdom from the Beyond. Whether it's to your ancestors, an alien pen pal, or something you can't quite name yet… let’s just say: the veil is thin.

Sweet Juice Fest is on June 28th. Buy tickets here.