Wellbeing Action
Using Festivals, Gatherings and Other Happenings
Drawn from writings from the 1960s to
the present. Updated Oct. 2014.92
CONTENTS
Festival One - Watsons Bay Festival - 1968
Festival Two – Paddington Festival - 1969
Festival Three - Centennial Park Festival -
1969
Festival Four - Campbelltown Festival - 1971
Festival Five – The Aquarius Festival - 1973
Festival Seven - The Evolving of the First ConFest - 1976
Festival Eight - The Cooktown Arts Festival - 1977
Festival Nine – The Small Island Coastal and Estuarine People Gathering Celebration - 1994
UN-INMA and the Atherton Tablelands Gathering Celebration Networks
This paper commences with brief
descriptions of a series of eleven festivals evolved by Dr Neville Yeomans that
were significant precursors and sequels to ConFest first held in 1976.
The Watsons Bay Festival
The first festival that Neville
energized was at Watsons Bay on the South Head of Sydney Harbour. Neville was
very interested in the significance of locality. Watsons Bay happens to be
where Sydney people go to commit suicide – at the Gap. Neville wanted to
reframe the meaning of the locality by evolving a festival that celebrated
LIFE. It was held in the green park shown in the photo below between the drop
to the Pacific Ocean and the blue waters of Sydney Harbour. Note the land
topography. The drop into the ocean is along the main ridge. From the top right
hand corner of the photo a primary ridge descends from a higher point along the
main ridge to the Sydney Harbour shore line. The park happens to be in a very
important Keypoint in this Primary Valley. Before all of this housing, all of
the water at the head of this Primary Valley would run to the Keypoint under
the free energy of gravity.
The Watsons Bay
Festival site at the Gap
A Keypoint at the Left-hand of
the Above Dam on a Yeomans Property at North Ryde, NSW
Notice that the land topography
is the same in each of the above photos. Two primary ridges running down from a
main ridge with a primary valley between; all of this has immense significance
as a living metaphor of the Keypoint in the Yeomans family’s Keyline in sustainable
farming. Neville’s father was P.A. Yeomans who is recognised as the person
making the most significant contribution to sustainable farming in the past 250
years. The above photo shows the Keypoint (at the left hand side of the dam) in
one of the primary valleys on the Yeomans Farm. Again all of the rain falling
in the head of the valley runs to the Keypoint.
This Keypoint has main features
with significant implications for making nature thrive. Neville extended ways
to have nature thrive to ways to have human nature thrive. This is discussed in
detail in Spencers two volume set ‘Whither
Goeth the World of Human Futures’ and Cultural Keyline – The Life Work of Dr
Neville Yeomans’ (Spencer, L. 2012).[1]
Working with
Free Energy
A Clay Model Featuring
Keyline Principles in the Left Primary Valley
In the above photo, note that in
the left primary valley a dam has been placed high just below where the steep
slope begins to flatten - at the Keypoint. This means the free energy of
gravity may be used to distribute water over the lower land. The land both
above and below the contour through the Keypoint (the Keyline) has been chisel
ploughed. Note also that water has been tracked along these chisels grooves
along the left hand side of the middle ridge and even around the chisel into
the primary valley on the right. This allows irrigation of most of the land
below the Keyline, especially all of the lower ridges. . Note also the flows of
‘water’ in the right hand primary valley (shown as light green). The ‘water’
run-off runs to the floor of the valley, causing a potential eroding rush. The
practical consequences of Keyline and its application in ConFest and its
outreach are detailed in ‘Whither
Goeth the World of Human Futures (Spencer 2012a & b).[2]
In the Nineteen Sixties, Neville
Yeomans joined with Margaret Cockett and others in forming, and becoming the
president of the Total Care
Foundation, a registered charity that is still active. This entity was one
of many entities formed by Neville to replicate Fraser House Therapeutic
Community. As Australia’s first Director of Community Mental Health and
Community Health Neville evolved foundations, community groups, and
collectives, as well as self-help groups and mutual-help groups - evolving what
he termed Laceweb Functional
Matrices.
One of these Mutual-Help Groups
was Mingles. This entity also
had an inter-cultural focus in supporting the linking of international students
from Africa and Asia attending Sydney University and University of NSW (under
the Colombo Plan) and also linking these with Australian students from those
same universities and also linking in others interested in intercultural
relational exchange .
Mingles supported social and academic relating, and lessened the stress emanating from having English as a second or third language. According to recent research, International students in 2014 are still experiencing psycho-emotional and physical stress from inadequate English language competence (G. J. Gatwiri, 2014). This is a major problematic in a sector contributing 17.6 billion Aus$ in 2009 and 15 billion in 2012. Mingles may well be an effective model for alleviating these problematics.
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, gatherings, and
celebrations energized/ influenced by Neville.
1.
Watsons Bay Festival - 1968
2.
Paddington Festival - 1969
3.
Centennial Park Festival - 1969
4.
Cambelltown Festival- 1971
5.
Aquarius Festival - 1973
6.
ConFest - 1976
7.
Cooktown Arts Festival – 1977
8.
Developing Aboriginal & Islander Therapeutic Communities Gathering
(Petford) - 1992
9.
Lake Tinaroo Relational Mediation Gathering Celebration - 1993
10. Small Island Coastal and
Estuarine Peoples Gathering Celebration
(Lake Tinaroo) – 1994
11. Star of the Seas Festival
Gathering (Townsville) - 1994
The process of exploring how people change
as they work together to change aspects of society was as important to Neville
as evolving and holding some event.
Neville 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’ a term denoting ‘people connecting together connecting to place’. The Watsons Bay Gathering was another opportunity for
Neville to explore community mutual help; this time with the combined themes of
‘intercultural cooperation’ and ‘all forms of artistry for wellness’. Neville
used the term ‘Cultural Healing
Artistry’.
With the 1968
Watson’s Bay Festival, Neville fostered multiculturalism 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 Laceweb[3]
resonance with what Neville 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 the 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.
Paintings by John Olsen in 1964
Clickers would be
given out so the crowd could ‘clickerlong’ with the bands in the evening.
Neville’s blending
together of all forms of artistry is a repeated theme in all of the events he
energised throughout his life and parallels use of all forms of artistry in
Indigenous life.
Another letter to the town hall
in Sydney[4]
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. Neville
always gave some care to his naming of groups and collectives. “care free’ has
multiple meanings; ‘care-free’ as in ‘joyous’, ‘care provided free’ and ‘being
free of care’. Having a women’s group was consistent with cleavering into
sub-groups at Fraser house. The letter states that during the Festival there was
an art exhibition at the Masonic Hall. One gallery alone lent $14,000 of
paintings. $14,000 in 1968 is equal to $96,250 in 2014.
Neville timed the Watson’s Bay
Festival to coincide with the Sydney All Nations Waratah Festival during 6-13 October
1968. This timing to coincide with a large festival is a precursor to Neville’s
evolving micro-gatherings as pre or post gatherings to large global conferences
in the nineties, discussed later.
Participants at Watsons Bay Festival
Australian Don Henderson sung
folk with poetic interludes[5]
Australian Folk singer - Don
Gillespio
A
collection of expensive sculpture, pottery and art was on display
- on
loan from Art Galleries
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.
In keeping with Neville’s intercultural
synthesis focus, the Watson’s Bay Festival featured the cultural artistry from
twenty-three different countries (appendix 25).
The Second Festival – the Paddington
Festival
To launch Paddington Bazaar to surround
his Paddington Community Mental Health Centre, Neville worked with the local
community in evolving the Paddington Festival. Creating a community public place
(cultural locality) – the Paddington Bazaar was one of Neville’s 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 of embedding self-help wellbeing-focused
action within everyday community contexts, and at times helping to constitute
these contexts, is a central concept within the Laceweb. It is resonant with
Tikopia way.
Festival Three - Centennial
Park Festival
The next festival Neville and others evolved was
the Centennial Park Festival, a few kilometres from the Sydney central business
district. The Festival covered 540 acres (of the 889.5 acres) in the north
eastern valley of the park.
This was Australia’s first hippie festival.
Neville placed a number of Centennial Park Festival photos in his Mitchell
library collected papers – refer photo below.[6]
Photo 1. Article and photo on Centennial Park attendees – Sydney Morning Herald
Neville was also a founding member of the Sydney
Arts Foundation. This Foundation was the organizer of the Centennial Park
Festival.[7] Again, for Neville, the shared experience of
Foundation members working out how to get things happening together was a
central focus. The key aim of the Sydney Arts Foundation was to establish an
arts centre in Sydney.[8] The Centennial Park Festival was supported by
many embassies, consuls, civic groups, arts groups, national and international
societies and clubs and schools.
Neville’s inviting the support of many foreign embassies continued his
‘intercultural cooperating’ theme in events. He was also exploring the
strengthening of civil society based artistry. The range of events at the
Centennial Park Festival is detailed below:
A film show
Barbeques
Cultural displays
Display by Historical Fire Engine Association of Australia
Displays of national dress
Displays of yoga
Dog obedience exhibition
Dress and fashion parades
Folk dancing
Folk singing
Handcrafts
Horse drawn cart pageant
Jazz groups
Jogging
Kite flying
Light shows
Lions club display and activities
Marching girls
Marquee and geodesic dome
Music performances
National dancing; National feasts; National songs
Painting groups
Physical fitness activities
Poetry reading
Pop groups
Puppet ‘Shoes’
Qantas and TAA displays
Ropes area and ladders
School gymnastics teams
Six Vintage cars
Small tractors and trailers for
shifting people; Static displays
Festival Four - Campbelltown
Festival
Neville, Lien, his younger brother Ken, and Ken’s wife Stephanie were the key organizers of a small, though very important Festival in 1971. It was held at another country property Neville’s father had acquired off Wedderburn Road five kilometres from Campbelltown, which in turn is around 50 kilometres down the main highway from Sydney towards Melbourne. According to Bill Elliott[9] (a long term ConFest attendee – ConFest is described shortly), as well as Ken and Stephanie Yeomans,[10] the Campbelltown Festival was small, with around 150 attending.
Many of the cast and crew of the hit musical ‘Hair’ attended the Campbelltown Festival and added to the passion and artistry. Neville, Ken, and Stephanie have all attested to the fact that there was a real fervour among the attendees to mount a very large festival that would celebrate and engender possibilities for a New Age – to quote the ‘Hair’ hit tune, a festival for the ‘Dawning of the Age of Aquarius’.
After the attendees had packed up the Campbelltown Festival they held a meeting in an old shed near the Yeomans’ farmhouse where it was resolved to put on a festival and call it the Aquarius Festival. They had a target figure of 15,000 people attending.
At the Campbelltown
Festival meeting Dr Neville Yeomans and his youngest brother Ken used their
knowledge of Keyline to search maps of New South Wales to find a good place for
the Festival. They suggested the Nimbin region in the hills at the back of
Byron Bay. It was a beautiful green area of undulating forest and farm country,
though stagnating economically.
Two people were
empowered by the Campbelltown meeting to set off in search of sites and the
result became the Aquarius Festival at Nimbin NSW (inland from Byron Bay).
Again, the process of setting up such a large event provided a scope for
Neville to action research how people may reconstitute themselves towards a
more rich wellbeing through community mutual help. The process is in many ways more important than the outcome.
In their preliminary
discussion at Campbelltown about the proposed Aquarius Festival, the group
decided that they wanted to work cooperatively with local people around the
proposed Festival site, have local people having a say in the Festival and
sharing in any profits, and preferably using the farm lands of more than one
farmer. They also wanted the whole process for evolving the Festival to be
organic and natural – to be self-organizing.[11]
It is possible to see Neville’s
Cultural Keyline design principles being introduced by Neville as a theme and having
an influence on the decisions of this planning group. Note the implicit
Cultural Keyline principles:
1.
Enable and design contexts where resonant people self
organize in mutual help
2.
Have outside enablers work and network with the local people
in the region
3.
The local people have the say in meeting their own needs
4.
Support the local people in networking – (Festival on a
number of farms)
5.
Local people get flow-on (share in profits)
6.
The local action is self-organizing
Festival Five – The Aquarius Festival
The Aquarius Festival
did take place in Nimbin between 12th to 23 May 1973 and 15,000
people did attend. It became the first of the large alternative festivals in
Australia.
The Festival did make
a profit and the local community decided that their share of the profits be
used to create a municipal swimming pool. This was agreed to, and Ken Yeomans
designed it using Keyline principles. The pool still functions well to this
day. It is round and has a sand base over concrete. It very gently slopes in from
the edges to become deep in the centre. The water flows up from below in the
centre, and flows out at the edges. The sand stays in place. The young children
enjoy the shallows. There is a lap swimming lane in the centre. It can be seen
behind the Nimbin caravan park on Google maps.
The Nimbin
Swimming Pool
Tuntable Falls
Commune was started from some of the Festival proceeds, and was designed on Keyline
principles. That commune continues to this day.
Festival Six – ConFest
When Jim Cairns,
Australia’s Deputy Prime Minister under Gough Whitlam, his personal assistant
Junie Morosi, David Ditchburn and others in the mid Seventies began preparing
the first ConFest - short for ‘conference-festival’, Jim Cairns and his group
chose to meet in the Church Hall next door to Neville’s Community Mental Health
Centre in Paddington.[12]
Neville and others
had energized a small urban commune focused around the Paddington Community
Mental Health Centre and the Paddington Bazaar. The Hall next to the Vestry had
become a regular Sydney meeting place for people who had been the energizers of
the Aquarius Festival.
Photo by
Michael Mangold - used with permission. The hall (next to the vestry) where the
ConFest planning meetings were held
Neville
attended the ConFest planning meetings next door and contributed to the
planning of the first ConFest - Cotter River, 1976.
Ken Yeomans
used Keyline principles to set up the water system at the Bredbo ConFest, Mt.
Oak in 1977. Ideas from his father’s book, ‘The City Forest’[13] were
used to lay out ConFest roads along ridgelines.
Walking workshop/conferences
were held on Keyline.
ConFests have been
held since the Seventies.
Since the early
Nineties seven/five day events have being held over both the New Year and
Easter periods. They are typically on the Murray River, or one of its tributaries
in the Victorian–New South Wales border region.
Following
encouragement by Neville to become involved in ConFest, during the 1990s and
early 2000s I was one of a few people who selected ConFest sites and energized
the initial site layout. A couple of weeks before ConFest 10 – 12 others would
arrive to commence set up.
A few days before
ConFest, site volunteer numbers swell to around 100. I have surveyed over 70
potential sites. Since 1992, I have regularly attended ConFest and since1993
have been one providing enabling support to the workshop process. By 2012 I had
survey over 80 sites for Festival use up the East Coast of Australia, 15 of
them with Neville and two with Ken Yeomans.
Neville
attended the ConFest planning meetings next door and contributed to the
planning of the first ConFest - Cotter River, 1976.
Ken Yeomans
used Keyline principles to set up the water system at the Bredbo ConFest, Mt.
Oak in 1977. Ideas from his father’s book, ‘The City Forest’[14] were
used to lay out ConFest roads along ridgelines. Walking workshop/conferences were held on
Keyline.
ConFests have been held since the Seventies.
The Australian Down
to Earth Network (ADTEN) was formed as a loose Australia-wide coalition body.
ADTEN subgroups formed throughout Australia holding a number of ConFest
inspired gatherings. ADTEN faded from history in the early 1980s. Ideas are
evolving for re-energising ADTEN.
Since the early
Nineties five/seven day events have being held over both the New Year and
Easter periods. They are typically on the Murray River, or one of its
tributaries in the Victorian–New South Wales border region.
Following
encouragement by Neville to become involved in ConFest, I am one of a few
people who found and visited potential ConFest sites and selected sites to use
and buy, and who have energize the initial site layout and set up; a few days
before ConFest, site volunteer numbers swell to around 100. I have surveyed
over 70 potential sites. Since 1992, I have regularly attended ConFest and have
been one providing enabling support to the workshop process since 1994. By 2012
I have survey over 80 sites for Festival use up the East Coast of Australia, 15
of them with Neville and two with Ken Yeomans.
In the 1990s
around 350 workshops and events
were held each ConFest on a very wide range of topics relating to all aspects
of the web of life consistent with Cultural Keyline. Also consistent with
Cultural Keyline, the ConFest workshop process is totally self-organizing. By
2014 the workshop numbers for the five day Easter ConFest has grown to over
870, with the top day having 265 workshops and two other days have over 200
workshops.
Deputy prime
minister Jim Cairns speaking at ConFest
- photo from DTE archives; photo I took of ConFest workshop notice boards all
prepared for ConFesters to arrive - December 2002; and villages at ConFest (photo from
DTE archive)
With Neville’s subtle
orchestrating during the initial planning of the first ConFest in 1976, the site
set-up process for this conference-festival is still based upon the enabled and
enabling self-organizing community and implicitly uses Keyline and Cultural Keyline features. Nature
guides design and layout. A few
volunteers with the way walk the site till it becomes familiar to them. The
land ‘tells’ the set-up crew where things can be well placed. Natural barriers
such as creek banks may mark the self-organizing
edge of the car free camping area.
Festival
Seven – The Cooktown Arts Festival
Shortly
after the first ConFest in 1976, Jaciamo Caffarelli a musician and painter (who
was a Fraser House outpatient in 1961 who gave me permission to use his name)
along with his wife Pamela were key energizers of the Cooktown Arts Festival in
Cooktown on Cape York, Far North Queensland. Jaciamo had stayed in touch with
Neville after Jaciamo ceased being an outpatient. Coincidently, Jaciamo was
living directly opposite Neville in Yungaburra when Neville bought his house
there in the Nineties. I spoke extensively with Jaciamo and Pamela about the
Cooktown Arts Festival and his memories of Fraser House and Neville while I
stayed with them at their place in Yungaburra for a week and travelled with
them to the Laura Aboriginal Festival in June 2001.
At the
time of the Cooktown Arts Festival, Cooktown was an extremely remote outpost of
about 350 people on
Photo 11 Photo I took of Jacaimo
at Laura Festival
Given
the remoteness, the festival was very rich. Jaciamo told me (July 2001) that
the events included three three-act plays - complete with stage, scenery, costumes,
orchestra and lighting. One was a Chekhov play – The Cherry Orchard. A
puppeteer put on regular shows. As well, the Cairns Youth orchestra played
along with a number of swing and Trad Jazz bands, pop groups and a
xylophone/percussion group. Spontaneous acoustic music jamming sessions
abounded. Neville Yeomans, Jim Cairns (Deputy Prime Minister), and Bill
Mollison, one of the founders of Permaculture, were speaker/workshop
presenters. There was a very active workshop scene on all aspects of wellbeing.
The Small Island Coastal and Estuarine People Gathering
Celebration
In
1993 Neville arranged for a half page flier to go off to many global governance
bodies that spoke of ideas evolving for a gathering celebration bringing
together Aboriginal and Islander women and resonant others from remote areas of
Australia to explore the following themes:
o Softening
of Substance Abuse
o Stopping
family violence
o Human
caring alternatives to criminal and psychiatric incarceration
In
Nov 1993 a letter was received from the UN Human Rights Commission stating:
o that
they loved the idea of the gathering celebration
o that
they were sending many 1,000s and asking where to send it
o Asking
for a report and photos
The
Gathering Celebration did happen in June 1994 and a Report was sent to UNHRC.
UN-INMA and the Atherton Tablelands Gathering Celebration
Networks
In
the early 1970s Neville travelled to and stayed for a number of times in the
Atherton Tablelands evolving the UN-Inma self-help group and other self-help
groups and supporting locals in generating healer networks, gathering
celebrations, workshops and other events. The UN-INMA Atherton Tablelands
Inma Project details the fifty year rollout of healing wellness action.
References
Gatwiri, G. J., 2014. The Influence of Language Difficulties on the
Wellbeing of International Students: An Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis.
Unpublished Research Paper; copy in Laceweb Archives.
Mangold, M. (1993). Paddington
Bazaar. Sydney, Tandem Productions.
ConFest and the Next 250 Years