Renew Fest will host a weekend-long Vigil For Grief in May 2022, and will return with the festival itself in 2023.
Organisers say that after another hugely challenging year for many, hosting a Vigil for Grief rather than the full festival program feels like a timely and important response.
‘Given how warmly the Vigil was experienced in 2019, and how much people said they needed it and wished it could happen every year, we are excited to bring this back for our community here in Mullumbimby and beyond’, says Renew Fest director Ella Rose Goninan.
‘The Vigil will be an opportunity to quietly contemplate your grief and all it brings to the fore; to feel, to heal, to love and to cherish. Doing this together connects us in our humanity and to all that must be acknowledged to move forward in healthy ways as a society’.
‘It will be a place to connect to the deep love and care we have for one another, the Earth and all living things, which is found underneath all grief, sadness and loss.
‘The last time we held it, many people said the experience of the Vigil was like a deep exhale and a feeling of something within each of us that was finally given the communal space, visibility, care and respect it needs’.
The event will feature many of the artistic and cultural aspects found in Renew Fest, including an immersive music-scape, local poets, contemplative installation art, and quiet communal spaces. The Vigil for Grief will be held under the fig tree grove of the Mullumbimby Showgrounds across Mothers’ Day weekend, May 7–8, 2022.
More information to come at www.renewfest.org.au.
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