Deep thanks to all those that paved the way for this festival and for regenerative pathways in the Northern Rivers, in the previous decades and millennia. It is an honour to walk with you on this country. For the festival itself, we began back in 2016 but its genesis in the frontline activism of the Bentley Blockage two years earlier…

2014-2015: Proto-festivals activating community

After returning from the success of the Bentley Blockade, our festival director Ella Rose Goninan was inspired to funnel the energy into regenerative solutions ‘back in town’. She ran two 100% Sustainable Mullumbimby town meetings, which brought hundreds together across many sectors and helped birth various local groups including COREM and Kindred Youth. 

2016-2018: The first three festivals 

Our inaugural festival in 2016 was just one day, but made a big impact as one of the first festivals in Australia to go fully zero waste, influencing dozens of festivals since then.

We grew to two days and three nights by 2018, and became known for adding humanity renewal to the sustainability agenda, and for captivating embodied immersions like the fig tree soundscape and hourly one-minute-silences. 

Each year was a different headline focus, including parenting for a peaceful world with Robyn Grille in 2017, and mental health awakenings with My Brave Australia and various presenters in 2018.

2019: Deepening into grief and renewal 

With ecological grief continuing to increase across our community, and our director Ella experiencing several major grief events of her own, we hosted a special 30hr immersive Vigil For Grief, to honour our deep connections and disconnections to earth, life and self.

The Vigil was accompanied by internationally acclaimed griefwalker Stephen Jenkinson from Canada, who spoke on two occasions, firstly on elderhood, and then on grief.

2020: Crowdfunding success, then COVID-19 

To accelerate the festival’s growth, and evolve to a sustainable organisation model with a paid core team, we ran an all-or-nothing one-week-long crowdfunding ticket blitz in mid February 2020. We called on the community to become a ‘flock of visionary early birds’ to ensure the festival could go ahead, and indeed we took flight! It was a tremendous success and an energising outpouring of collective action and communal love for the festival and for regenerative change. We sold 350 tickets to individuals, and generated that much again from business donations and bulk sponsorship pledges

However, with COVID-19, we needed to postpone the festival until May 2021.

2021: Renew Fest returns

And so here we are, back again!