All photos courtesy of Lucidity Festival.
Coming soon – April 10-12 in Santa Barbara, California…..
by Saphir Lewis
This is a new Fest feature format, a mini tour into the details of a festival on the horizon… I’ll try to do one a week…beginning with one of our faves, Lucidity:
The fun begins with an early arrival adventure:
PERMACULTURE 3-DAY INTENSIVE
Lucidity kicks off early this year, with a 3-Day Permaculture Design Intensive (April 3-6), on site before the event. Featuring five fab instructors: Erik Hjermstad, Ryan Rising, Ray Cirino, Loren Luyendyk, & Art Ludwig teaching permaculture design, natural building, gardening and food forestry, soils and composting and lots more…..followed by a Polish Ambassador led Community Action Day in his Pushing Up The Pavement tradition – in Santa Barbara.
EDUCATION
Continuing to focus on education, Lucidity will expand their Lucid University Campus in downtown Lucid city, to three pavilions – The Permaculture Action Hub, Fishbon Studies and Ancestral Arts. The Permaculture networking hub will be a free form place to hook up with others and talk shop, learn and share, build alliances and brainstorm our future, people! At Fishbon Studies you’ll get to hear amazing panels that have been brought together by Lucidity curators to discuss deep topics that affect us all, and then the panels will expand into community discussions and small groups. So much has come out of these sessions in the past that you’ll want to get over there to take part. There also will be room for evening theater and performance arts in the Fishbon Pavilion.
Being that this year is the Kindred Quest in Lucidity’s 6 year story, 2015 is the year to learn from our ancestors and the carriers of traditions handed down through the ages. These Wisdom Keepers come from many traditions, many continents, many ancestries, many walks and ways….only to find that the deep truths taught by each of these traditions, brings us back to our Oneness every time. A golden moment that will be fleeting if you don’t catch it….the Wisdom Keepers have come to meet you, and share with you from their hearts.
MINDFUL FEEDING
In case you don’t read much further, I want you to know about Lucidity’s limited access amazing food commissary. I was on staff last year and normally I eat pretty darn healthy. But after a week in their kitchen I felt AMAZING. The food was SO alive, SO delicious and SO revitalizing, I felt like I’d been at a spa retreat….this year they are opening up their meals to just a small number of festies, to join in the thriving heart of nourishment to help you go out and create the magic! Ingredients are very well ethically sourced through local, sustainable gardens, a SOUL FOOD ethos, and prepared by the loving hands of Chefs Gage & Julia of Collision Cuisine – there are just 100 passes left. $81 for lunch & dinner Fri-Sun.
CEREMONY
The Wisdom Keepers won’t only be hanging out in the Ancestral Arts area, they’ll be bringing their deep earth connection to Lucidity’s opening and closing ceremonies, led by Chumash representative Carmen Sandoval, honoring the first people of the land, and the ancestors of the Live Oak grounds where the gathering is held. These Elders will be meeting before Lucidity to build bonds and co-create a Sacred Mandala that will be held in the Ancestral Arts Yurt.
GUARDIANSHIP
There has been a wave running through our discussions as event producers over the last few years – a shift in the wind. As we move out of the Warrior mode into the new paradigm of caring for one another, we look to the archetype of GUARDIAN. We’re not “fighting against” anymore, we are Standing Up For, in new ways for us to live together. In expression of this modality, Lucidity will be offering Guardianship Training onsite as well as beforehand in Ojai at the Lovers Nest Village Fundraiser.
On site there will be 4 Teams – MSRG:
Medical – caring for health and wellbeing
Security – negotiating conflicts that arise
Rangers – first responders for psychological harm reduction
and Guardians – who will be wearing sashes and hosting each area of camp. These will be watching over and assisting if you need help on any of these levels. There are still Guardian positions open and the way to get involved is through taking one of the trainings. The Guardians will also be Game Masters for the Lucidity Mythos Wanderers Game that I’ll talk about in a bit.
During the event, to be a Guardian is to be available to tend to the needs of those around you, to know where resources are, who are the leaders to call on, who has radios, and helping to resolve situations where help is needed. Taking one of these trainings gets you into the network for a position of Guardian during the gathering.
See: Community Guardianship 2 Day Training and Evening Concert series featuring some amazing musical performers, family, friends food and fun! Ojai, California, March 28-29.
MUSIC – MUSIC – MUSIC
You will not be disappointed, three fully packed stages bring a wide variety of music to the weekend.
ALIVE STAGE
This is a place to feel alive in the Now, to live lucid and appreciate the diversity of musical styles our community and culture has to offer. The Alive Stage will feature a variety of genres of live music spanning Funk, Folk, Rock, Reggae, Bluegrass, Hip Hop and Livetronica. They’ve got some banjo pickin’ too. The Alive stage will be solar powered by a collaborative sustainability intitiative with EcoBloom.
LUCID STAGE
The Lucid Stage showcases the quintessential sounds of Lucidity- deep mid and up-tempo bass music to move your body and soothe your soul. These vibrations will pulse from one of the best Funktion One sound systems on the West Coast. Lineup Curated by Memekast.
NOMAD’S STAGE
The Nomads’ Stage in the Nook showcases up and coming, deep 4/4, and forward thinking music. It is Home of the “Wild Monkey” totem. If Monkey is your spirit animal you enjoy dancing and will likely be found, swinging and jumping wildly to the funky beats found there. Lineup curated by Music is Love
THE VILLAGES
Once again, the Seven Themed Villages will host all sorts of crazy activities for the adventurer.
GODDESS GROVE
The Grove is a place for secret treasures, words, acts, and dance, holding the Vivacious Jaguar as their symbol. The Jaguar, symbolic of the untamed feminine, the moon, and water represents the heroic quest of the Goddess, The Goddess Grove explores all aspects of the Goddess within us, the light, the dark and the transforming.
LOVERS NEST
Embodying the benevolent Dove, Lovers Nest is a village of mindfulness and grace, invoking the feminine power of giving, the prophecy and new beginnings. There you will find yoga, kirtan, meditation and lots of heart centered music.
FAMILY GARDEN
Family Garden opens the gates for kids of all ages to have an outlet to fully participate and experience the festival to a higher degree. Together, in this open source setting, we will engage the children with workshops, play shops, art, music, dance and food.
WARRIORS WAY
The Warrior’s Arena offers workshops focused on energy awareness and cultivation through tai chi and qi gong, martial arts in the form of Kenpo, and movement through capoeira and dance. Check out workshops on traditional skills such as sustainable animal harvesting and nature awareness and evenings the village will host drum and dance circles.
NOMADS NOOK
Renegades? Yes. Vagabond? You know it. Wild? Our middle name. Come play and dance your heart out, to 3 days of 24 hour electronic music, stimulate your mind with educational and sustainable workshops, Explore radical self-reliance, while cultivating of kinship with our ever expanding global family!
TRIXSTER’S PLAYGROUND
If Coyote is your spirit animal you are adaptive to new situations and have a close-knit family. Coyote energy is tied to simplicity and trust. It stimulates and renews innocence and reawakens a childlike wisdom in the world. This is a place to play and grow with new friends and old.
HEALING SANCTUARY
A space for Oneness….where healers gather to share their gifts. When we allow the space for ourselves to Heal, We create and resonate a coherent field, and within this microcosm of the Sanctuary, we create healing frequencies that are Planetary.
THE I AM HEALING SANCTUARY will be in this village, offering bodywork, access consciousness, qi-gong massage, reiki and energywork, ayurvedic medicine, herbalist, deep soul work and more. Donation based, 9am-6pm.
Whoa – that’s a lot of Villages! So much fun to be had….but there’s more!
BRANCHES MOBILE ART GALLERY
Branches offers a place to kick back and take in the arts. Enjoy the works of art ,beautiful and unique as it’s spread through the gallery on bamboo walls. Curated from our applications, there is opportunity for YOU to show work…
BLISSWAYS TEA LOUNGE and DIVINITREE YOGA will also be offering their delights.
OMG – more FUN Stuff yet to come….
LUCIDITY MYTHOS WANDERS GAME
This creative community has designed a brilliant Oracle Deck, modeled after the classic tarot, along with a trans-media storytelling project including a short animation film. How to explain this? The Oracle Deck is part of the Mythos Wanders game…kind of a treasure hunt with a story that follows the Lucidity vision and theme. All over camp there will be clues to lead you to the Oracle Cards! The Guardians (see above) will be hosting as Game Masters and when you gather all the cards you get a special PRIZE! This project comes out of an over the top brainstorming team and 22 participating artists – there will be twists and turns that you won’t expect. Not for kids only!
And that’s not ALL! There will be an amazing Marketplace with festival fashion to wrap up in, live painting at every turn, art installation and giant puppets…playground climbers for grownup kids and a whole courtyard of the best super health food booths to choose your yummies from.
Get there or be square! Tickets sell out fast – Grab Yours!
http://2015.lucidityfestival.com/