Soulshine!
I’m writing to you with a full heart and a ton of enthusiasm. I’m eager to update you on how Soulshine Festival 2022 went and comment on the inner nature of the work involved in building community.
First, Soulshine Festival 2022 was “next level” and exceeded many people’s expectations, including my own. We saw and acted with our values guiding us and created an evolution of our beloved gathering. We succeeded in creating the slice of reality that rejuvenates our spirit to propel us forward as individuals and a community.
More than 600 people participated this year. The moderate increase in attendance has broadened and deepened the collective experience while also allowing us to improve logistics, risk management, and build-out quality at a good pace. Growing moderately also allows the festival to maintain the integrity of it’s value system and affords the time to experiment with how to best serve the community. We’ve certainly grown in scale and now looking to grow in awareness and apply what we have learned so far.
Those among us who are new to festivals are getting better at “festivalling” and the crews, often behind the scenes, are rising to define and fulfil the production demands. Our goal is to give everyone a positive experience by finding a balance between work and play. We’ve gotten much closer this year and we will continue working towards balance as we continue creating together.
Community-powered festivals can be psychological pressure-cookers that challenge us to better ourselves within the community. They focus our efforts on building out a shared, unifying, social experience and invite us to embrace the challenges that come with it. Soulshine looks to incubate this catalysing environment as a real world application of the healing and growth mindset.
As a collective, we must appreciate Soulshine Festival’s transformative energy and focus our attention on nurturing a festival-wide culture of psychological awareness and support. This begins with the simple act of being there for each other and grows through more frequent connection in work, learning and play.
– Anas
