Luminate 2009: New developments for family-friendly festival
After its success last year, the Luminate Festival returns to Canaan Downs between 30 January and 3 February.
Luminate differs from many other music festivals in that one of its main aims is to educate people about sustainable choices.
"The vision is to gather people together to spend a few days celebrating a sense of conscious community," said Luminate co-ordinator Maia. "Music is obviously a big hook for people to attend festivals and the acts we have lined up will appeal to a diverse audience, but a lot of people are drawn by the workshops too. They set out to share skills and knowledge about the different kinds of choices we can make. We have twice the number of workshops this year and they'll be on more than once so people can do the ones they want. The workshops are about things that work. They're intended to inspire people to make different choices for themselves."
Maia explained that the Luminate organisers hoped to influence other event organisers to prevent the generation of rubbish. There are no recycling facilities or rubbish bins on site. Festival-goers are expected to pack out everything they bring in.
"That makes us all think about the kinds of packaging that we take in, for example," said Maia. "The food and drinks stalls will be serving into containers that people bring for themselves or hire from us for the duration of the festival. We have to stop generating rubbish and instead re-use rescources."
Luminate is an alcohol-free, family-friendly festival. "There's lots of things for kids," said Maia. "We've got some professional circus performers coming from Christchurch, Dunedin and Wellington. They'll run daily workshops for children and adults and, at night time there will be co-ordinated performances."
There have been some changes to the anticipated acts. "We were sad to hear that Yeshe and his band, the World Citizens, have had to cancel for family reasons, but we've secured Mihirangi as a replacement. She's going to be at WOMAD this year; she's an awesome woman with incredible energy. We're sure people are going to love her."
The organisers are keen for potential ticket-buyers to know about two very recent developments. "Local businesses have asked about the possibility of weekend passes for people who have to go back work on the Monday," said Maia. "We're part of this community too, and we want to make it possible for people to go, so we've decided to trial the idea of weekend passes for locals. They'll have to apply through our website which is at <www.luminate@nativeharmonics.co.nz>. We have to have all the applications by 27 January because after that we'll be up at the site and unable to respond. We'll see how it works and think about it for next year."
Maia said that the long-term weather prospects seemed to suggest that settled, drier weather was a possibility this year.
"Whatever happens we've got extra weatherproofing for our stages and heaps of marquees, so there will be plenty of warm dry places if they're needed."
Neil Wilson
