The following uses the Watson’s Bay Festival
as an example of the use of Festivals towards new cultural and intercultural
syntheses. In the Sixties, a passionate group formed the Total Care Foundation,
a registered charity. This entity was one of many formed to support Community
Mutual Help. This Total Care Foundation was used to evolve and hold the
Watson’s Bay Festival in 1968 on Sydney’s South Head. Watson’s Bay Festival was
the first of eleven festivals energized/ influenced by the Total Care Foundation
over the years up the East Coast of Australia.
The process of exploring how people change as they work together
to change aspects of society was as important as evolving and holding some
event. The collectives in involved used the process of organizing festivals and
events in order to evolve networks and community. In the process of coming
together to put on the Watsons Bay Festival the participants were forming
cultural locality (people connecting together connecting to place.
During
Festival-based preparatory interacting all involved were constantly attending
and sensing and supporting self-organising, emergence, and keypoints conducive
to coherence within the festival generating contexts – monitoring theme, mood,
values and interaction.
The Watsons Bay gathering was an opportunity
to explore community mutual help, this time with the combined themes of
‘intercultural cooperation’ and ‘all forms of artistry for wellness’. With the
1968 Watson’s Bay Festival, multiculturalism was fostered in Australia. The
Watson’s Bay Festival in Watson’s Park was more than multicultural, it was intercultural in that it fostered
sharing links among strangers from differing cultures. The Watson’s Bay
gathering demonstrated an early resonance with what has been called ‘cultural
healing action’, where social action combines music making, percussion,
singing, chanting, dancing, reading poetry, storytelling, artistry, and
sculpting – all within intercultural festive and celebratory contexts.
A planning letter from Total Care Foundation
to the Sydney Town hall details that the Watsons Bay Festival would be held
Sunday 13 October 1968 from 11:30 AM to 4:30 PM at Robertson Park and Watson
Bay Park, and that it would be completely open to public with no fees.
Preplanning for the Paddington Festival is also mentioned. The Watsons Bay
Festival would feature an international display of music, dancing and national
costumes. Artefacts would be displayed at the Watsons Bay Branch library,
including a display by artists John Olsen and Brian Cummins. Clickers would be
given out so the crowd could ‘Clickerlong’ with the Bands in the evening. This
blending together of all forms of artistry is a repeated theme in all of the
events energised by the Foundation and parallels use of all forms of artistry
in Indigenous life.
Another letter to the Town Hall in Sydney
speaks of the Women’s’ Social Group, called the Care Free Committee of the
Total Care Foundation, helping with the evolving of the Watson’s Bay Festival.
This social group was another process for bonding people together. The letter
states that during the Festival there was an art exhibition at the Masonic
Hall. One Gallery alone lent $14,000 of paintings.
The Watson’s Bay
Gathering Celebration was timed to coincide with the Sydney All Nations Waratah
Festival during 6-13 October 1968. In keeping with the intercultural synthesis
focus, the Watson’s Bay Festival featured the cultural artistry from
twenty-three different countries.
Australian
Don Henderson sung folk with poetic interludes
Australian
Folk singer - Don Gillespio
A collection of expensive sculpture, pottery
and art was on display
- on loan from
Czech
Trich Trotch Polka
Filipino
Band
Greek
display by Girls of the Lyceum Club
Hungarian
Czards
Indian
dance by Rama Krishna
Indonesian
singers
Israeli
Dancer - Vera Goldmen
Japanese
dancers
Karate
display
Malaysian
Scarf dance
Mike
Harris - guitarist
Oriental
dancers
Polish
dance music and songs
Rev Swami
Sarcorali and Roma Blair
The Yoga
Fellowship gave a Yoga demonstration
Sally
Hart - also folksy
Spanish
Classical guitarist Antonio Lazardo
Spanish
Flamenco Dancers
Spanish
Flamenco Guitarist played by Ivan Withers
Welsh
folk singers
In the
evening was a psychedelic light display and pop band.
The Second Festival – The
Paddington Festival
To launch Paddington
Bazaar to surround his Paddington Community Mental Health Centre, The Total
Care Foundation worked with the local community in evolving the Paddington
Festival. Creating a community public place (cultural locality) – the
Paddington Bazaar was one of the themes in exploring community mutual help in
energising the Paddington Festival. It was held over the weekend of 21 - 22
June 1969.
On the Saturday there was
a market bazaar in the main Paddington Town Hall. The Paddington Mid Year
Festival was held the next day. The Paddington Bazaar evolved out of the
community energy of this festival. The Bazaar, also called Paddington market,
thrives to this day as a community market. This model embeds self-help
wellbeing-focused action within everyday community contexts.
The next Festival evolved was the Centennial Park Festival, a few kilometres
from the Sydney Central Business District. The Festival covered 540 acres in
the
Examples of Community Mutual Help