Songs of the Earth grows out of 30 years of work in places where art, ritual, and community meet — from Forgotten Land in Goa, through Contact Improvisation festivals across three continents, to the workshop and music programme I curate today at New Vision Festival. It’s the thread that was always there, now given a name: bringing traditional knowledge and contemporary artistic practice into the same room, so each strengthens the other.
Vision
A network of artists, teachers, and communities, connected by shared practice, building real spaces for learning, healing, and creative work, in respect for the land they stand on.
Mission
- Keep traditional knowledge and ritual alive as living practice, carried by the people who actually hold it.
- Bring elders and lineage-holders — custodians of living practice who carry a tradition rather than perform it — together with contemporary artists and educators, as equals building something together.
- Create and sustain real places — centres, retreats, residencies — where this is daily practice.
- Root ecological awareness in lived experience, through performance, teaching, and storytelling.
Four Pillars
- Art & Ritual — Projects and performances that weave movement, music, and myth into ritual with real transformative weight.
- Education & Transmission — Workshops, residencies, and retreats built for embodied learning and genuine cultural exchange, the kind that happens between people.
- Community & Ecology — Locally rooted creative centres, built together with the communities already there, serving both the land and the people on it.
- Research & Documentation — Documenting traditional arts and the knowledge behind them, through film, writing, archives, so they live on with the people who carry them.
Activities
- Intercultural retreats & residencies
- Artistic collaborations & performances bringing traditional and contemporary forms into the same space
- Festivals & cultural exchange, building on what already exists through New Vision Festival and Forgotten Land Gatherings
- Educational programmes for young people and educators
- Land-based and ecological art projects that actively support regeneration
Impact Goals
- A growing family of places where art, education, and ecology meet in daily life
- Real, working partnerships between wisdom keepers and emerging artists
- Rituals that make sense for how we live now, rooted in balance
- Creative work that builds lasting cultural and ecological resilience
Where This Lives
Songs of the Earth isn’t a separate project — it’s the vision running through the work itself. You’ll find it in the music and workshop programme at New Vision Festival, in the gatherings hosted through Forgotten Land, and in every new place this work takes root, including the one currently forming in Bali.