What is Dream Surfing Art Festival?

• CREATIVITY: “The only thing that limits us is our imagination”

Dream Surfing Art Festival encourages people to connect with each other and express themselves through visual art, music, dance, circus skills, theatre, poetry and everything in between. There are no rules to what we can create and how we express our creativity. The aim is to connect people to make things beyond their wildest dreams. Dream Surfing Art Festival asks us to explore, play, take risks and develop collectively through art.

Workshops and performances will be led by participants at Kofi Bar and Sapney and other sites in and around Auroville. These will include art and craft, pottery, design, henna, music, dance, poetry and healing. We can connect you to others and different venues to create or perform in. All workshops will be by donation. We will also do outreach workshops with children in the local community aspiring to create a carnival including a samba band. Click here for the calendar of events.

We will have a gallery at Kofi Bar displaying artists work, artwork made during and before the festival workshops, installations and films.

At Sapney, each week, we will have a different artist in residence, who will be invited to make their work for one week and lead a workshop on site before exhibiting their work. To apply click here.

Creativity comes in many forms. On each Saturday we will have fancy dress. Workshops will be held to recycle our box of freecycle clothes and stuff. Participants are invited to swap, gift and create costumes that transform us as individuals and express our celebration visually.

Our vision is to use materials that are environmentally friendly. We encourage people to bring materials to share and have a leave no trace policy.

• PARTICIPATION and CO-CREATION

“Action is stronger than words”

Dream Surfing Art Festival is about action, painting your dreams to create a new reality. We aim to encourage a mass exchange of creative experiences through workshops, events, music, dance, poetry, screenings of films and documentaries, food, drinks and much more. Dream Surfing Art Festival will be run entirely by volunteers, who will dream and co-create the festival together. The festival will be open to everyone visiting and living around the space, which will change shape and transform many times over the month long event. Everyone who participates is part of the team.

One of the core ideas of this is to realise that everybody is part of a community of like-minded individuals. We feel strongly about participation and believe that everybody has the ability to make a difference or a change to the way things work, both within the festival and the world we live in.

By co-creating, we evolve our dreams and become inspired by a much larger creative force than ourselves.

• SELF SUFFICIENCY AND ALTERNATIVE LIVING

“Be the change you want to see in the world”

Dream Surfing Art Festival is about exploring an alternative way of living and co-creating by sharing and dreaming. We aim to be as environmentally aware as possible. This includes recycling almost all waste, investing in composting toilets, and aspiring to transform our community into a permaculture site. The aim is to become self sufficient in herbs, some vegetables and provide a working model of alternative systems by the time of the festival. By exploring alternative systems we begin to creatively explore alternative solutions to some of the problems we are facing in the world today. Dream Surfing is about creating a positive idea about what we want to see.

The other side of self sufficiency belongs to each participant by accepting the concept of zero waste and taking responsibly for themselves and others around them. This includes finding accommodation, eating, transport and covering basic needs.

Participants are advised to bring at least 500 Rs for each day you are expected to stay dependent on your needs.

• WHY DREAM SURFING?

‘Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.’ Albert Einstein

Dream Surfing Art Festival aims to shift and shape the way we think and explore the world through our imagination and hence our creativity. The festival is one part of a much larger idea we call Dream Surfing.

Dream Surfing was inspired by the concept of Couch Surfing, where people go beyond the borders and limitations of capitalism through staying and hosting each other around the world for free. It is a beautiful exchange of ideas, knowledge and blending of cultures towards a more holistic global community. The idea of Dream Surfing adds a new dimension to this concept, where we don't just open our doors to sharing our living space but also share their dreams and invite other dreamers to co-create. By using the already existing Couch Surfing network, a Dream Surfer would exchange their dream and lifestyle with another dreamer around the world. “I surf the dream you have manifested and you surf my dream”. The effect would be to experience how different people have brought their dreams into reality and how people are really being the change they want to see in the world.

The idea for the art festival was born out of these ideals, with the realisation that art can be catalyst for releasing and challenging personal and societal stresses whilst encouraging cultural changes and awareness. By sharing our creative expression we take a step towards creating the reality we want to live in. Hence painting our dreams to co-create a new reality.