Why Music & Dancing at the Gathering of Tribes?!
I was asked:
Why is there music and dancing at the Gathering of Tribes? How does it connect with regeneration?
The question surprised me because I realised that to me it feels obvious, but I was not able to give a clear and rational answer.
A great question indeed! (and very much in the spirit of the gathering of tribes — the festival of questions)
Thinking into this question of why a regenerative gathering of tribes needs music, dance and song forced me to examine my assumptions about why humans create festivals — what purpose they serve to us as individuals and communities. As well as what I personally envision a “regenerative life” to feel like.
Let me share a dream of how I envision a day at the gathering:
Over breakfast you and I spark an idea we’re excited about — perhaps a project between our tribes, perhaps something new — we realise it needs a team and a community to manifest. After breakfast we host a conversation around the idea, continue talking through lunch and in the afternoon organise a deep dive workshop for those interested in potentially participating. A full day of ideating, engaging, processing. Our brains are buzzing with ideas and emotions. How to unwind regeneratively? We are at the gathering, we dance together — smiling and shaking. We deepen our relationship through smiles and motion…
The gathering of tribes is a serendipity accelerator where regenerative leaders come together and miracles happen. A deeply intellectual festival of grappling with questions, ideas, and challenges. A gathering of dreamers that do. It’s going to be intense intellectually and emotionally.
At traditional conferences it is usual to unwind in the evenings through drinking, when the days are intense, moderation is forgotten and mornings are lost to hangovers and low energy. How much better to settle our overactive minds with dancing!
This is a regenerative gathering — the intent is that all participants go back home feeling full but regenerated, not drained. If we simply spent five days in our minds through ideas and emotions forgetting our bodies, not only would it be harder to integrate, we would go home out of balance.
This brings me to the question of what is a regenerative life? For me it means living life in connection, in community. Living without artificial separation of “work” and “life”, without division of “professional” and “play”, without boxes dividing “the people I work with”, “the people I play with”. I love dancing, and building connection
If we can’t dance together, share music together, how can we build a new, regenerative, world together?
⇒ Join the Gathering of Tribes let’s co-create a new kind of festival for the regenerative era!
The Gathering of Tribes is an attempt to answer the questions: “What festival does the regenerative movement need?”, “What does it mean for a festival to be regenerative?”. We start where we are and with what we know — music/art/cultural festivals, business conferences, BurningMan, unconferences, traditional tribal gatherings — taking the relevant/interesting/inspiring elements of all of these into the idea blender… It is an experiment, we will observe, learn and develop and continue experimenting. The exciting part is there are many unknowns, the frustrating part is there are many unknowns and a lot of figuring things out as we go along.
One day (hopefully not too soon — that would be boring) the gathering will settle on a repeatable formula, have a set culture, standard organisational structure, list of principles, do’s and don’ts, etc. It will become predictable and safe — it is the natural evolution of ideas. For today we are in the laboratory, we don’t know what will happen, come, let’s discover together what a regenerative gathering of tribes could be!
What festival do you think the regenerative movement needs?
⇒ Let’s co-create it, come join the Gathering of Tribes!
