Photo credit to Tanner Colvin, Sergey Adv, Christopher Van Putten, Jimy Carey, Ken Roader
2015 CascadiaNW Arts and Music Festival was an amazing success! Held at the Granite Falls Masonic Campgrounds on 300+ acres of forest and river, more than 1500 people attended the inaugural festival from July 23-26th, including hundreds of performers, vendors, musicians and artists.
CascadiaNow! was able to hook in by bringing our Sasquatch, tabling, presenting - and our new 30' bus was put to the test as the shuttle for the entire festival. Running all weekend, it held up great, shuttling hundreds of folks where they needed to go, and at the end of the three days including the drive up and back using a total of.... 1/4 tank of gas! In addition, we hooked in with the naturally aligning Ecotopia village, were able to record a few interviews, and gave one of the keynote presentations on Sunday evening. As the weekend progressed, more and more flags seemed to emerge throughout the festival...
The CascadiaNW festival is unique in that it is a co-creative and interactive experience, bringing together five villages and camping areas, each with their own theme including - Technosis, Mythica, Ecotopia, Corpus Crux and the general camping. Three of these villages had their own stages, including an amazingly lit up river stage for Mythica, the Dream Dome for Ecotopia, and of course the electronic Lodge for Technosis. Each of those villages has a creative influence over a particular stage, meaning that as the villages start becoming a culture within the context of the festival, based on proposals from each of the villages based on what the village itself would like to see and/or hear on and/or around the stage. That could be anything from musical acts to decorations to art installations. This year, more than 80% of the music was locally Cascadian, but the festival also does a great job of helping to showcase the interconnections into a broader global community of music and art with the downtempo headliner Lulacruza, from Argentina and the techno headliners, smash tv is flying in from Berlin, and Lee Reynolds, Tara Brooks, and Ben Annand from Los Angeles.
Artwork happened throughout the weekend at all the stages and in between, including live painting, a housed gallery, performances, fire spinning, music, aerialism, acrobatics, tea houses, and pretty much every rock became a part of altars that seemed to appear at every intersection of the festival.
Artists who did live painting, or had art in the gallery included Jeff Mihalyo, Eric Nez, Michelle Anderst, Michael David, Erin Fox, Moksha Marquardt, SIENNA, Gary Evans, Ferg, Monreaux Monroe, Dana Vallery, Selva Bhairavi, Adrien Miller, Alexander Mustgrave, Spencer Sinner, Michelle Dawn, Paul Ross, Mari Shibuya, SynchroniciTea, Bill 'Fire' Ball Mural, Cosmic Geometry, Zepto Space, Macgickal Doorway, Mobile Henna Girls, Red Tent, Jasmine Dragon Tea Lounge, Cascadia NOW Sasquatch, Fire Fountain
With Workshops that included Heart Opening Journey - Tools for Joyful Living, Cascadia Now, Re-Wilding Ourselves: Food As Medicine, Turning your trash into Treasure, Free Range Poi, Seattle Hand Drummers, Good Morning Qigong! Yoga with Rainbow Eric, Hoop Love, Yoga with Lael, Hula Hoop Making Workshop, The 13th Flower - Venus Retrograde and the Archetypal Ascent of the Divine Feminine, Heart Opening Journey - Tools for Joyful Living, Food Systems Mapping, Tree Juice- Essential Expansion, Wild Edible and Medicinal Plants, Theatre Radical: The Transformative Powers of Play, Infinite Games, Consent Culture Revolution, Rainbow Honey & Tea Party
We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.
-- Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Amazing Performers included Kiki D, Kaleida Kinetic, Star Dive, Melody Kay, Nova Nova, Down Temple, Indiyana Rae, Jinx Gogo, Twilight Belly Dance, Jed Vassallo, Janna Mae Kruger, Kurbii KahlevRa, gNome, Kayla VanSkyhawk, Izra Shalmiyev, MagiKat
A huge thank you goes out to Michael Manahan, and the entire Starborne and Cascadia crew who made this event happen - an undertaking that literally involved hundreds of folks, and dozens and dozens of amazing communities.