The fifth annual Beehive Block Party filled a 20,000 square foot courtyard in South Los Angeles in July 2026 with food, art and secondhand clothing vendors, and everything about it had been planned by people aged between 16 and 22.
They work through the SoLa Live Accelerator, a program the SoLa Foundation runs with Live Nation. The foundation is the nonprofit arm of the affordable housing and real estate investor SoLa Impact, and the accelerator started in 2022 as a ten-week experiment before growing into a six-month course with weekly guest speakers from the promoter. The block party is what it builds toward.
The 2026 cohort of 19 curated the whole bill, which carried the soulful octet wst cmplx, the jazz artist Veritus Miller and the headliner Navy Blue. "Even down to the coloring, the branding, like orange and blue, going into that sunset-type vibe," said Audrey Ohwobete, a 21-year-old UCLA student in the cohort. Gladis Verenice Ramirez Veliz, also 21, acted as one of its creative directors, running video shoots and keeping the social marketing consistent.
The program exists because of a specific number. SoLa Foundation executive director Sherri Francois said it came out of a conversation with Live Nation chief executive Michael Rapino about the gap between the share of artists who are people of colour and the share of executives behind the scenes. His words, she said, were that the industry has a pipeline problem. A 2021 USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative study found 12.5 percent of senior managers across live music and concert promotion came from underrepresented racial or ethnic groups, and under 1 percent were Black.
Each week a visiting professional covers a different corner of the business: booking, marketing, event production, venue operations, ticketing, merchandise. Students then apply it to the festival. Live Nation reserves ten places in its competitive internship program for accelerator alumni, meaning at least half of every cohort leaves with paid career advancement, and five top-performing women get extra mentorship through Live Nation Women.
Two alumni show the route working. Aiyana Da'Briel came back to help lead the program after internships in Live Nation's Venue Nation and Early Career Touring Immersion schemes. Kyland Talbott finished his own internship and then worked back of house on Kendrick Lamar and SZA's 2025 Grand National Tour, having joined with no production experience at all.
Ramirez put the stakes plainly: in this industry you have to know someone to get in, and she and her peers did not know anyone, not even to reach the mail room. Goldman Sachs has projected the live sector growing 7.2 percent a year between 2024 and 2030. Other Los Angeles events we have covered include the Boyle Heights Youth Fest and the Grand Performances summer season, and more bills sit in the festival tracker.
The facts
- The 2026 Beehive Block Party was the fifth annual edition
- A cohort of 19 people aged 16 to 22 planned the whole event
- The SoLa Live Accelerator is run by the SoLa Foundation with Live Nation
- It began in 2022 as a ten-week experiment and is now six months long
- wst cmplx, Veritus Miller and headliner Navy Blue played
- Live Nation reserves ten internship places a year for alumni
- A 2021 USC study found under 1 percent of senior live music managers were Black
- Goldman Sachs projects the live sector growing 7.2 percent a year to 2030
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