The global health crisis put a halt to many memorable school events that all graduating seniors look forward to. Above them all, in-person graduations have been canceled nationwide and left many graduates without a way to celebrate their accomplishments.

To fill the void for graduates during this difficult time, these Black founders started Live Tassel to be the virtual solution for all commencement ceremonies.

As a result of the COVID-19 outbreak, partners Cabral Clements and James Jackson teamed up to work on the creative production behind Live Tassel to create sufficient virtual graduation ceremonies that could still bring graduates joy.

“Graduates should have the opportunity to feel special and recognized,” said Clements. “Not only did I see a need to help schools navigate virtual graduations using my media production skills, but I also needed to personally pivot as projects slowed due to COVID-19.”

Along with a small team of editors on staff, Live Tassel operates through a detailed procedure that allows them to create custom experiences for all to partake in.

The ideas behind this virtual experience largely deal with the process of gathering information and special requests from students and administrators to build out a run-of-show for a condensed ceremony online.

Before each commencement, students and families are given instructions to follow on how to virtually attend the experience.

According to Clements, these online experiences are provided via the educational institution’s YouTube channel where it will stream via a YouTube Premiere.

Despite being pre-recorded experiences, these premieres still provide live engagement for attendees. Additionally — following each ceremony — Live Tassel distributes surveys to record feedback.

As of right now, Live Tassel mostly partners with colleges in America, but are open to partnering with schools (K12-Higher Ed) to create these unforgettable virtual graduations.

Their new endeavor has both the capacity and will to extend its services to all educational institutions who wish to properly acknowledge graduates during this time.

Although Live Tassel is a virtual replacement for commencement ceremonies at the moment, they are interested to see how their span of services will change within the next few months.

“I would hope that we can get to a point where we can have in-person graduations again, but there will still be a place for virtual graduations as well,” shared Clements.

Even after COVID-19 slows down, Live Tassel will pivot to remain a primary resource to honor graduates virtually, including those who take online classes as well.

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