Forest Creatures

Forest Creatures is a four day, three night gathering experienced in a semi-remote wilderness. It is the lovechild of a close-knit group of artists and dreamers collectively called Starlight Reunion. It is also a collection of beautiful people that want to have an amazing experience and adventure, and that includes you. We encourage flow dancers, live painters, DJs, musicians, poets, chefs, cooks, sculptures, aerialists, dancers, storytellers, comedians, and any others to participate by showcasing their art forms in a safe, supportive space. No prerequisites exist for participation in this community.

2019 Artist and Event schedule

Forest Creatures is a social experiment that shares principles and similarities to Burning Man, the Rainbow Gathering and and other artistic movements! THIS IS A GRASS ROOTS GATHERING that is built by community through volunteering. Each year has been different as the outcome of the event is 100% dependent on community participation and inspiration. We have seen growth in the numbers of people attending Forest Creatures over the years. As this festival becomes larger we must adapt and grow with it. This year we’ll be adding many volunteer positions that we haven’t had in the past to help alleviate the work load it takes to transform a patch of forest into a temporary village and unforgettable experience.

Our core focus is to embrace one another in such a way that inspires artistic self expression and a sense of community!

This Year’s Event – August 26- August 29th 2021.

Volunteer – Forest Creatures is reborn every year by a group of dedicated volunteers. We would love to have your help. There are a variety of things to do, and any help is appreciated. The easiest way for us to find out what interests you is through the form located here: VOLUNTEER FORM

FAQ/Survival Guide – All that we know so far and many answers to your questions can be found HERE!

Festival Map – In Process but here is last year’s map to build curiosity – MAP

Artist Application – Interested in sharing any type of art at FC4 ? Take a look here for the application, we have never denied any art application, the information you provide helps the team provide you with a safe space and resources you may need. ARTIST APPLICATION.

Lineup – In Process, but here is the artist and performer listing from FC3, with over 40 artists and performers of all kinds sharing the experience. FC3 LINEUP.

Carpool – We will be setting up an onliine resource for ride sharing- last year this worked out very well,

Maps – We will soon be providing festival groups, and location maps. Here is the map from last yeat to give you a sense of the location. ROUTE MAP.

HISTORY

Starlight Reunion was founded by a small group of artists who had the desire to take a different approach to the way artist and ,community unite through gatherings. We believe that everyone has something to offer when we get together. Spectators are transformed into community. Interacting with our community we find people often want to collaborate on the gatherings we organize and we do our best to accommodate. The community becomes part of the entertainment, the stylization and ambiance. The boundaries are abandoned. We feel a higher level of experience is achieved when these barriers are left out. Starlight Reunion has found much inspiration from the burning man culture, the rainbow gatherings, and various artistic movements around the world. We find inspiration from many avenues and with that inspiration we invite community to build experience.

Our first gatherings we’re NYE 2017 and Forest Creatures that summer. These two gatherings became our staple projects. I had been throwing NYE parties in New York meanwhile founding member Winter Ramos had been celebrating his birthday that same night and threw himself a party if someone didn’t throw it for him. The first NYE party we through together with the help of my fiancé Katie Condon went really well and we decided we needed to throw a summer gathering.

We discussed what we like about the festivals and parties we’ve gone to and what we wanted to do differently. We love the art and community of the burning man culture however we felt like the ticket price is out of many people’s budget. We love the rainbow gatherings and have learned how to host gatherings on public lands for free from them. We decided to pour our energy into a gathering based on combining a lot of what we learned from both.

Forest Creatures was born. A ticketless art and music camp out on national forest land that invites the general public to be apart of an artistic movement and community. Over time our two staple projects have grown to include hundreds of people who’ve enjoyed an interactive artistic experience. We began to take our collective’s efforts to other events such as Shine X, Disco Blood Bath, Alchemy Georgia burn, as well as several first Friday events.

Once we established our own creative space known as The Senvion we began to host several of our own underground gatherings such as poetry readings with food provided by a featured chef, live music performances, and Dj’ed dance parties. Our ability to host these gatherings has been completely depended on our art collective managing every aspect of Starlight Reunion. We are all artists and creative people who’ve taken on management positions within the collective to organize these events. Unlike the average event company, we measure our success based on the experience of our community and our own. Profit margins come after and are often nonexistent as we generally run events funded by donation. This is often sustained though volunteers putting in time and effort in building these events. Our core management team consists of a handful of people taking on various task such as social media marketing, event curation, graphic design, lighting, sound, and visual installations to name a few.

Collaboration, interactive experience, and a safe space for self expression.

A Lovenote from FC 3…

“It’s been a week...here is a little love note.To the wonderful Creatures that attended this amazing gathering,Thank you for your support, you’re gratitude, and your beautiful energy. Together we made a memory that I will hold close to my heart for a lifetime. I’m humbled by the experience of taking a dream and,together, building a reality. The gathering was a huge success for many reasons, with only a few areas that we hope to improve on.

Despite the intimidating forecast, we had a great turnout. With the amount of people we had, I’m surprised by how little trash we generated. We only found one campsite at the far edge of the festival that left a bit of a mess, and Chris and I returned to the site on Monday to pick up micro trash after the snow melted and there was very little.The Go-Fund Me made this year feel sustainable and less of a financial burden. I’m honored to have your trust with the donations and am pleased to announce we just about broke even on all consumables including food, generator gas, heater fuel, trailer rental, and bathroom facilities.

The commitment from all the artists was impressive. Despite the temperatures and weather, and considering that all the artists performed for free, 38 out of 40 DJ’s, musicians, flow artists, and visual artists made the trip, covering their own costs, to the mountains to be with us.. This was the first year we had live musicians performing on our stages and, wow, we’ll keep doing that. We even had DJ/musician Suplex travel 10 hours to share his set with us and we’re so glad he did! For future events, we hope to begin to help defray travel costs for the many amazing artists that share their talents with all of us.

This was the first year we obtained a permit and, with the large turnout, it was necessary. With permits from the Forest Service generally come visits by law enforcement and Rangers. There was a visit by Rangers both before and after the event. They seemed pleased with our care for the land and respect for the forest. A Law Enforcement Officer made a visit Saturday afternoon. He was very respectful to our community and I thank you for being respectful to him. We gave him little to worry about. The relationship between us and the Forest Service is crucial for the growth of our community and we are off to a fantastic start. We’d like to send out a big thank you to everyone who followed and respected the permit guidelines and the few requests we made to make sure things went smoothly for everyone.

This was our second year renting bathroom facilities and our relationship with the vendor has grown. Next year, they are willing to deliver to the gathering. This year we had fewer facilities available due to lack of transport support. You can expect to see 7 units next year.We were a little light on the volunteers for both setup and breakdown. We think this was due to the inclement weather. It rained on and off during setup Thursday and flurried on break down Sunday. Nonetheless it felt more sustainable than last year, considering that our infrastructure build-out grew to include two stages and twice the area of land use.All in all, this was one for the books and we owe each other for making it that way. We are doing our best to keep open lines of communication with you and value your words. If there is something we could improve on to create a better experience for our community, please share it with us. If anything happened that may have made you uncomfortable, please let us know. You can privately message us if you don’t want it public.Thanks for your trust patience and amazing energy.”

Bryan Kass aka BK Love.

Christopher Moyles aka Ghost Tribe

and the Entire Starlight Reunion Family