Festivals ~ WAKING LIFE
Textile Team & Landcare
@wakinglife.pt
For one month, I joined Waking Life, an independent arts and music festival in Portugal, working across textiles, decoration, and landcare. What began as a desire to understand what happens behind the scenes became an experience of deeply inhabiting a place, its people, and the many forms of care that allow a festival to exist.
I joined the Deco Tent textile team, working collectively to create and prepare the soft architecture of the festival, making pillows, curtains, coverings, and textile elements that shaped intimate spaces throughout the grounds. I was directly involved in the textiles for the Praia DJ booth, transforming the structure through layered fabrics and handmade elements, creating a softer and more playful environment for gathering, dancing, and listening. As well as the Overflow installation, where we used double layers of organza on natural fibers to create different layers of seethrough fabrics that followed the natural lines of the shore of the lake.
Alongside the textile work, I spent time in landcare and composting, tending to what remained after the festival. Working with food scraps and returning them to the earth became a quiet and grounding counterpoint to the intensity of the festival itself. A reminder that care also exists in the unseen, repetitive, and often overlooked gestures.
This month became an exploration of how artistic production can exist alongside responsibility towards land, community, and one another. Rather than simply arriving to consume an experience, I wanted to participate in the labor and care that holds it together. Learning through doing, making, tending, and being part of a collective.
(not many pictures of the final work)