A fire festival in Switzerland. Small, vibrant and growing. Totally off grid. Nothing for sale. Bring what you need and to give away. Arts structures are built AND all burned at the end of the festival. Also features music, dance and all sorts of creativity. The title is a word game (apparently) meaning avanti, forwards towards the fire, and let's go...
Fusion Festival in Germany every year. Very much a 'different' kind of festival. Check it out!
UK-based, George is an important commentator/writer on the edges of festival culture. His books on festivals, radical gardening and music are situated in the cracks and margins between social activism, popular culture and academic study. He describes himself as “a British academic with a longstanding research interest in alternative cultures and living practices, festivals and gardens, participatory arts and media, music, protest, peace, disability, and social movements.”
Much-mythologised Swedish musicians. Proto-type hippies, mask-wearing, commune-dwelling Psycho-Nauts. Making a lot psychedelic waves round the world festival circuit.
A couple of links to their strange worlds…the second being an official video of the band…
Perhaps the ultimate free cultural spaces band so far known to the world. They evolved out of the Californian scene of the mid 1960s to become the nexus of the free-festival, love-ins, be-ins and all that was the ‘hippy’ evolution. And their exploits on the Magic Bus with the Merry Pranksters gave birth to the never ending gigs that are the stuff of legend. Millions of Deadheads worldwide still believe that the Grateful Dead will live on for ever...as does the artwork associated with them.
Links to the official Dead site. And to a vast archive of their music.
The Green Gathering was formerly known as the Big Green Gathering in the UK . It has an environmental and social justice focus. It includes talks and workshops on permaculture, politics, ecology and crafts, as well as music, spoken word and art. The first Big Green Gathering was held in 1994 and the festival is currently held in Chepstow in Monmouthshire.
Best known for developing the concept of temporary autonomous zones (TAZ). Originally, his name was Peter Lamborn Wilson - he is an often controversial USA, Sufi-anarchist writer and activist.
This is a link to his writings available at the Anarchist Library. Plus a video link to rather self-opinionated interviewer talking to Hakim Bey.
A nice simple title for a big idea. This portal site is an on-line ‘Enquire Within’. Lots of good links to articles on hippies, alternative culture, plus lots of ‘straight’ stuff.
The site claims that: ‘It is an open community of passionate people — writers, explorers, knowledge seekers, conversation starters. Interacting and informing. Sharing words, pictures and videos. Asking questions. Finding answers. It’s a rich and rewarding experience with a unique set of tools and resources to help Hubbers find and build an audience, easily create articles, and earn all sorts of rewards, from accolades to ad revenue. Over 24 million people explore the site every month.’
You have to join to fully explore the contents. Here are a links to a couple of samples. You can see how they are sorted into categories and sub-categories.
On-line archive collection of ‘it’ magazine 1966-1994. One of the most read underground press newspapers from the UK in the late 1960s and early ‘70s.
Invisible Music links to some archive early festival sounds at Stonehenge - House of Thandoy and more.