\n<\/p>\n
\n\tOn Thursday night, the City Parks Foundation 2025 Dinner & Dance Party Benefit, this year honoring Grammy-and-Oscar-winning drummer, filmmaker, author, DJ and producer Ahmir \u201cQuestlove\u201d Thompson, raised nearly $1 million in donations. All funds raised will support City Parks Foundation\u2019s free arts, sports, environmental education, and community building programs produced each year in New York City public parks across all five boroughs.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe event, held in Central Park at the flagship SummerStage venue, also awarded Barclays Center\/New York Liberty\/Brooklyn Nets owners Brooklyn Sports and Entertainment with the\u00a0People & Parks Award.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tIn his acceptance speech, Questlove spoke of attending many SummerStage concerts as a young fan and hoping to perform there one day \u2014 the Roots\u2019 most recent show at the venue was just two months ago \u2014\u00a0and, in a comic slip, the proud Philadelphia native accidentally referred to New York as his \u201chometown.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tHe was presented with the Icon Award for \u201chis contributions to the artistic and cultural landscape of New York City as a music industry pioneer and innovative leader shaping our nation\u2019s culture,\u201d and noted that his Oscar-and-Grammy-winning documentary \u201cSummer of Soul\u201d celebrated a 1969 cultural festival in Harlem that had been filmed but was nearly been forgotten by history. It also noted that the Roots performed a free show in Queens for more than 7,000 New Yorkers in July, the day before the SummerStage gig.<\/p>\n
\n\tHis award was presented by legendary New York DJ, producer, radio host, and SummerStage alum\u00a0Stretch Armstrong (pictured with Questlove), who said, \u201cSummerStage means a lot to me because this is where I grew up.\u00a0The cultural output he [Questlove] is responsible for is astounding. It\u2019s hard to find an area of culture that this man hasn\u2019t made his mark on.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tThe evening concluded with a special DJ set by Questlove,\u00a0who packed the dancefloor with a trademark combination of pop, hip-hop, R&B, and rock classics and deep cuts, and the first-ever Young Philanthropists After Party\u00a0silent disco.<\/p>\n
\n\tCity Parks Foundation also honored\u00a0Brooklyn Sports and Entertainment with the\u00a02025 People & Parks Award\u00a0\u201cfor their work in uplifting the health, education, and well-being of communities in Brooklyn and beyond through their\u00a0philanthropic initiatives and neighborhood programs.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tand advising on efforts that simply wouldn\u2019t have succeeded without their guidance.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tCity Parks Foundation\u2019s 2025 Benefit was chaired by\u00a0Angela Barkan, Joe Killian, Roland Merchant, and Greg Williamson.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
On Thursday night, the City Parks Foundation 2025 Dinner & Dance Party Benefit, this year honoring Grammy-and-Oscar-winning drummer, filmmaker, author, DJ and producer Ahmir \u201cQuestlove\u201d Thompson, raised nearly $1 million in donations. All funds raised will support City Parks Foundation\u2019s free arts, sports, environmental education, and community building programs produced each year in New York<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24067,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[561,9357,1305,14660,4804,14659],"class_list":{"0":"post-24066","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-benefit","9":"tag-honoring","10":"tag-million","11":"tag-questlove","12":"tag-raises","13":"tag-summerstage"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24066","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24066"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24066\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/24067"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24066"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24066"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24066"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}