Sunrise on a new world
As I navigated my way to a secret location on Tasmania’s East Coast I wasn’t quite sure what to expect.
A festival that takes place in a make-believe world but that wants to inspire real-world change? An ambitious concept, I thought it would be difficult to pull off. And yes, I was curious to see if the brains behind the idea really did manage it.
Turning off the main East Coast Drive, 200 metres up the road I sailed past a gate before braking sharply and reversing back.
Hung proudly on the centre of the gate was a sign proclaiming “We Do Not Surrender”! This must be the place.
I had been worded up on how to let myself in; a hidden key would open a red padlock and admit me.
I began a long drive over undulating paddocks, thick with dry grass that looked like an ocean of white in the hot March sun.
As I approached the festival camp I passed signs with warnings, encouragements and proclamations that perpetuated the narrative the festival was built around.
“Don’t believe everything you’re hearing”.
“You are leaving the surrendered world”.
Newkind Festival, the brainchild of Erfan Daliri and Bravo Child, was a long time in the making. The idea was to create a festival that gave festival-goers something more.
When speaking to the Sunday Examiner in January, Bravo described it as a social change movement disguised as a festival.
“What we really want to stress is that this is a festival, but this is also real life … It’s not just art, and we really earnestly do want to champion the, perhaps naive or innocent, desire to change the world and we really want to acknowledge our ability and power as an individual to shift society,” he said.
The festival was designed around a post-apocalyptic fictional narrative, which it was hoped would encourage people to leave behind old ways of thinking and explore new ideas about, and approaches to, everything from education, to farming, to healing, to arts.
It asked the question, if you had the chance to build society anew, what would you do?
The tribe that came together at the festival were bound by one common goal: to find a better way for the world to run than it is currently. They were called Novalanders.
On arrival at Newkind the Novalanders were welcomed and taught the phrase that would typify the weekend.
As I drifted off to sleep in my little blue tent I heard the late-night revellers, enjoying the music and atmosphere into the wee hours “celebrating the future”.
The morning brought stillness, as the sky was lit as though on fire and a gentle breeze rippled across the tent village.
As the day warmed so too did activities.
Taking a walk through the site revealed workshops, talks, group learning sessions and classes.
A group practiced an ancient Indian martial art in one area, while just a small way further up the rise people sat in a semicircle learning about permaculture.
Next to the beach people gathered to explore alternative ideas about how to educate our children.
"It is not what sort of world we are going to leave our children, but what sort of children we are going to leave our world that matters," one presenter concluded.
While it would be easy to dismiss the festival as a radical, crazy idea there was something to be said for it.
To gather so many people and experts in one place, with the sole purpose of sharing and generating knowledge, was energising.
Whether you agree with the mission or not, the idea of re-inventing what a festival can be and the whole-hearted dedication of every person there to make a better future was refreshing.
Newkind’s success was in the hands of each Novalander; they could attend as many workshops as they wished, could learn as much as they wanted.
Four days of opportunity to be challenged, expand and develop.
And a lifetime to implement what they had learned.