Re-Fest: An Essay

Over the weekend, more than 700 peaceful protestors were arrested on the streets of New York City. As part of Occupation Wall Street, these individuals gathered together behind a collective idea of a world different from the one we see today. A world of community, a world of creativity and awareness and freedom, a world where nature and the spirit of wildness inside all of us is granted relevance and expression.

Over the same weekend, I found myself in the midst of something called "Re-Fest." It took me some time to understand exactly what I was dealing with, where it had come from, and how I was part of it, but I soon found myself almost too excited to maintain a focus on the present as ideas and potentials began to exponentially excite my curiosity and passion. I saw the beginnings of many fertile connections being made, and the energy of the synapse between individuals, co-ops, alliances, and businesses was palpable.

The quiet mumblings of paradigm shifts are becoming conversations that we can all join in on, share and learn from. We are realizing our potential as individuals in a co-creative universe and events such as Re-Fest are only the most primal examples of what is to become. This is not only the future of Savannah, but of the world.

I was surprised by the lack of undergraduate SCAD students at the festival. The reasons for this may be attributed to a few things, but two stand out for me. The perception that Savannah holds of Undergrads and the perception that Undergrads hold of Savannah. A lack of advertising to the undergrad sector on the behalf of the leaders of "Re-Fest" due to the apparent uninterested nature that many undergrads seem to have with the community of Savannah could have emphasized a vicious loop that needs to be broken.

SCAD has the capacity (similar, I would assume, to many colleges) of becoming a universe in its own right that shelters students and insulates them to the tangible "stuff" that is Savannah. Especially at an undergrad level, it is easy to close the loop of your life entirely inside the bubble of SCAD. I feel that this is a loss both to the community and the individual as each has been denied the lessons the other stores.

Re-Fest and the Undergrad could have both strengthened each other. There is a feeling at SCAD that Savannah offers very little future, and what future it does hold is quite old-fashioned. What I took away from Re-Fest was that Savannah holds a unique mix of materials, spirit, and people. There is a slowness to the town that has kept it behind Portland, or San Francisco but I see this staleness not as a curse, but a charm. It allows us, right now, to have a lasting impact on the southern renaissance that I find myself in the midst of. Things are changing, whether we see it or not. We can either resist the change and feel the pain of holding on, or collaborate as a community to create the future we all deserve.

What excited me more than the festival itself was the potential that it created. The unsaid, unseen connections that were made. New York and Savannah may be far apart, but what happened in the two cities is connected by a willingness of individuals to take power over their reality. The New Yorkers have the burden of being the symbol of the collapse of corporate materialism but here in Savannah we have the responsibility and the freedom to create the new paradigms and start the patterns of a collaborative spirituality that can connect all of us.