Multiple place/s: exploring the link between urban politics and rural festival environments

This paper aims to explore how the entertainment economy excludes individuals and facilitates private investment, the problematic shift towards a “creative economy” and increased regulations within Sydney’s entertainment sector. It also examines how a grass-roots, rural festival can be regarded as an extension of the urban context. It discusses the alternative counterculture(s) that exist despite (or perhaps because of) increasing inaccessibility and regulation, using as a case study an activist collective created in this climate, the Marrickville Warehouse Alliance, focusing specifically on its Star Shitty River Retreat festival.

A phenomenological, mixed-method approach is used with a focus on qualitative in-depth interviews with festival organisers.

This paper demonstrates how politics, embedded within urban place, can be transported to a rural festival site. The phenomenological accounts recorded with the festival organisers, paired with key theories within the literature, demonstrate how organising committees can shape the understanding of place and politics in grass-roots festival environments.

By leaving “no trace” on the site and engaging with and contributing to the indigenous community, the Star Shitty River Retreat festival can be categorised as a type of “creative enhancement”, in which a shared environment of political and communal understanding creates a unique, yet temporary, sense of place within a rural setting.

There is limited literature on the Australian festival context. The finding that rural festival sites can be regarded as an extension of the urban context lends itself to the concept of de-territorialisation or blurring of city boundaries, reinforcing how a festival’s geographical location is of little significance when supported by “portable communities”.