Country music fans in the region are still reeling over the euphoria of their Saturday night love fest with Garth Brooks at Notre Dame Stadium, so organizers of IDEA Week 2019 couldn’t have picked a more appropriate time to roll out the headliner for their spring affair in the form of superstar Tim McGraw.
McGraw will play the Purcell Pavilion at the Joyce Center at the University of Notre Dame in what will be an almost intimate setting compared to the 80,000 seat stadium packed with fans on a cold October night this past weekend.
The Grammy Award winning artist has sold more than 50-million records and dominated the charts with 43 worldwide #1 singles and he will play the Purcell Pavilion on Saturday, April 13th, 2019 in what is guaranteed to be another sell out affair at Notre Dame, with IDEA Week Insiders entitled to purchase tickets one day before the general public gets a crack at them.
IDEA Week is an innovation festival hosting business, technology, and entertainment events to provide entrepreneurs, students and community members across the region with the practical knowledge, creative inspiration, and social foundation they need in order to innovate within their own careers, studies, and communities.
The IDEA Center at the University of Notre Dame is the lead organization behind the concept of IDEA Week, which was inaugurated earlier this year when they split the week-long affair into four event types of Learn, Play, Meet and Compete. Nearly 18,500 people attended at least one of the 49 IDEA Week events from April 20th to the 29th.
Events last year included the 2018 Maker Faire, a $10K blockchain technology Innovation Challenger, the 89th Annual Blue & Gold Game, a Notre Dame Pitch Rally, Mythbusters’ Adam Savage, Studebaker Tours, workshops, a rescue drone demonstration over the St. Joe River, Daymond John of ABC’s Shark Tank, a sold out concert by The Chainsmokers, a live performance by violin virtuoso Itzhak Perlman, the Notre Dame TEDx speaker series and tons more.
IDEA is an acronym for Innovation, De-Risking and Enterprise Acceleration, making the IDEA Center the fundamental resource for all commercialization and entrepreneurial activities at Notre Dame.
The IDEA Center provides the necessary space, services and expertise for idea development, commercialization, business formation, prototyping, entrepreneurial education and student entrepreneurial efforts. It is designed to bring the best Notre Dame faculty, staff, and student ideas and innovations to the marketplace.
More than a dozen organizations in the region are involved in organizing IDEA Week for 2019. The include the following:
- Premier Partners: Kem Krest and the South Bend Tribune
- Track Partners: Lippert Components and Bennington Marine
- Headline Partners: Comcast Business, PNC Bank, Marshall County Economic Development Corporation, Patrick Industries, Visit South Bend-Mishawaka, and Thomson Reuters
- Collaborative Partners: Genesis Products, South Bend-Elkhart Regional Partnership, Startup South Bend-Elkhart, and SAP
- Event Partners: Western Governors University, Indiana Economic Development Corporation, Faegre Baker Daniels LLP, and Elevate Ventures
- Panelist Sponsors: Vickers Engineering Group, Vantedge One Group, Red Rabbit Automation, Notre Dame Federal Credit Union, ITAMCO, General Stamping & Metalworks, First State Bank, Comcast Business, Aunalytics, EMU Technologies, Whirlpool, Bayer, Ladue Curran & Kuehn LLC, Barnes & Thornburg LLP, and Keybank
Headlined by the Tim McGraw experience, IDEA Week is a celebration of the burgeoning ecosystem of innovation and entrepreneurship taking place at the University of Notre Dame and in the South Bend-Elkhart region.
The week-long series of events in April of 2019 will provide thousands of entrepreneurs, founders, developers, makers, inventors, designers, students and investors the opportunity to celebrate innovation and entrepreneurship in a dynamic, creative and fun learning environment.
Organizers are looking for partners to help establish Notre Dame and South Bend-Elkhart as a new tech hub in the nation.
Here’s what’s already on tap for next April:
- 8 Entertainment Events (including the McGraw experience)
- 45 Programmatic Events ranging from the four Learn and Play to Meet and Compete categories
- 54 Total events over 7-days in April
- 8,000 Event attendees
- 7,200 Concert attendees
- 16,000 Total expected attendees
Anyone else interested in becoming an official IDEA Week sponsor is invited to contact Nick Swisher at 574-631-2984 or by email at nswisher@nd.edu.
Tickets for the Tim McGraw concert will range from $40 to $125 each depending on seating area and is open to all ages. As noted, IDEA Week Insiders will get first crack a day early. You can become an Insider and get on the mailing list to be among the first to know when tickets go on sale by clicking this link:
https://ideaweek.com/eventbrite-registration/
Tim McGraw has won 3 Grammy Awards, 16 Academy of Country Music Awards, 14 Country Music Association Awards, 11 American Music Awards, 3 People’s Choice Awards and numerous other honors. His iconic career achievements include being named the BDS Radio’s Most Played Artist of the Decade for all music genres and having the Most Played Song of the Decade for all music genres. He is the most played country artist since his debut in 1992, with two singles spending over 10 weeks at #1. His career-long tour successes include the record-setting Soul2Soul The World Tour 2017 with his wife, Faith Hill. McGraw starred in and narrated the hit movie “The Shack,” to add to such other film credits as “Friday Night Lights” and “The Blind Side.”
McGraw recently released two news songs “Neon Church” and “Thought About You”, his first new solo music in two years.
