The Young People’s Guide to Horizon Festival
Georgia Beard, the youngest addition to the IN Noosa Team, brings a youthful yet frustrated kind of passion to her Horizon Festival picks. This year, she takes us on a young people’s festival trail that connects us to country and community!
Waking up before sunrise is one of life’s toughest battles – especially when you’re a notorious night owl. But dragging yourself out of bed is worth it to see the sky emblazoned with colour as First Nations culture lights up on the banks of Sunny Coast country.
Dawn Awakening journeys through story, dance, song, visual art projections, spoken word and fire installations on the final morning of Horizon Festival. On Stumers Creek, Coolum, I’ll be wide awake experiencing a performance featuring the Gubbi Gubbi Dance Troupe, Helena Gulash, BJ Murphy, Soraya Fewquandie, Chris Williams and Samuel Pankhurst and guests artists Fred Leone, Maroochy Barambah and Joe Geia.
What I love about living on the Sunshine Coast is knowing how deep the roots of history run through the land. This region echoes the voices and movements of the Kabi Kabi and Jinibara peoples, who flourished in clans and connected with one another at festivals, ceremonies and games.
Many people gathered for bunya festivals at Burun, now known as Baroon Pocket. Now Butchulla Songman Fred Leone and international composer and instrumentalist Samuel Pankhurst return to Baroon Pocket Dam for Open Air: Yirinda.
The duo draws on the ancient stories of Fred’s people – blending Aboriginal language with contemporary, acoustic, and improvisatory sounds that sidestep all expectations. I’ll be settling on the lakeshore with a blanket and a cushion to absorb this vivid collision of music and place.
As a young person tormented by the precarious state of society and the nebulous shape of my own identity, nothing understands me more than music. I’m rubbish at performing it, but when it comes to listening, I never want to take my earphones out.
I love tuning in to the layers of instrumentals and unearthing the meanings buried in the lyrics. Even better? Learning what draws my fellow music lovers to their favourite songs, hearing what they hear. People connect to music in a myriad of ways, and nothing proves it more than The Playlist.
Horizon Festival’s place-based performance gathers songs and associated stories that locals relate to their Coolum experience – a favourite piece of music that connects them to place. I can’t wait to enjoy this one-hour immersive theatrical experience combining live music, video projection, visual art, and spoken word!
Medicament For Your Predicament
Speaking of precarious societies and nebulous identities, Horizon Festival’s Medicament For Your Predicament offers reassurance of the physical kind!
From antidotes to ire and diuretics for disillusionment to cures for capitalism – artist Cat Jones’ tonics, salves, gargles and powders could be the answer for our soluble and insoluble bodies.
Imagine if we could solve climate change, political division and our own internal struggles with a simple dose of something? I’ll be diagnosing matters close to the heart and formulating my very own remedies at the OPEN LAB! hands-on workshop! Then visiting OPEN PHARMACY! a subversive retail space showcasing the medicaments and serving up prescriptions and medicinal beverages!
