Red Thread Festival

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Within 3 hrs of Sydney, NSW (Details TBA) · Camping and van sites · Communal Meals Included
Children centred · Women, Trans and Non-Binary People welcome
Tiered tickets from $360

The Red Thread

Somewhere behind you there was a woman who knew things. How to bring a baby into the world. How to dress a wound with what grew nearby. How to feed twenty people from very little. How to sit with a woman who was grieving and not try to fix her. None of it was written down.

It moved hand to hand from grandmother to mother to daughter to child in kitchens, around fires, in the ordinary hours of the day. Most of us never received it.

The thread was cut somewhere along the line.

Red Thread Festival is where we pick it back up.

What this is

3 days and 2 nights at a private location TBA within 3 hours from Sydney. Camping under the trees, meals shared, fires held, and a gathering built around one thing: wisdom moving between the generations. Grandmothers, mothers, aunties, daughters, sisters and children come together to give and receive in balance.

Our currency is not expertise. It is lived experience, wisdom and acts of service. We are specifically calling in our elders and grandmothers to share their experiences and stories with us. If you have an older woman in your life, bring her. If you have a daughter, bring her. This gathering is designed to be experienced in relationship. Children are actively welcomed and centred here, not accommodated at the edges.

Why we are doing this

Many of us quietly dream of a future where we feel held by community. We are not willing to wait around for that future to arrive.

Red Thread is a slow build towards a different kind of social infrastructure. Women staying connected to family, work and modern life, while collectively building access to land, food, care networks, seasonal gathering places, intergenerational wisdom and relationships strong enough to hold us when things get hard.

Changing the world is not only about what we fight against. It is also about our capacity to practise what comes next.

The Festival is both a gathering and a fundraiser for that work.

Red Thread is not being built to generate private profit. All organisers are volunteering their time and equally purchasing their own ticket to the event.

Our only paid facilitators are First Nations women and Indigenous facilitators. Funds raised through the Festival go back into building this work and making it more accessible.

So when you buy a ticket, you are not just paying for three days of experiences.

You are helping build the culture you want to live inside.

What to expect

We are interested in what emerges when we stop rushing long enough to listen. Our gatherings are intentionally slow and designed to deepen over the event, and beyond.

Rather than collecting experiences, we invite you to stay with what draws you. A craft. A teacher. A conversation. A role in the village. Country.

You might begin learning a craft in the morning and find yourself still sitting there hours later, hands busy while stories move around the circle. You might meet an elder or wisdom keeper on the first day and choose to keep returning to her across the weekend. You might naturally begin helping with the children and realise that they are some of the most profound teachers.

You may find that some of the most meaningful parts of the weekend aren't on the programme at all. Cooking a meal together, tending a fire, holding a baby, helping an elder, washing dishes or sitting beside someone who needs company are not interruptions to the gathering. They are the gathering.

Four threads will move through the gathering. You might move between them, or find yourself following one thread deeply across the three days.

WHIMSY: Play, imagination and celebration
Harp sound baths · fairy circles · mask making · sacred play · clowning · flow arts · fire dance · open mic

WOMB: Wisdom through the cycles of women's lives
Bleeding · birth · motherhood · menopause · ageing · grief and death · womb conversations

WOMENCRAFT: Making, movement and knowledge held in the hands and body
Weaving · basketry · ritual silk · embroidery · dance · somatics · music

WISDOM: Knowledge passed between generations, cultures and lived experience
Matriarch circles ·First Nations storytelling, food, medicine and caring for Country · SCI-MAA sacred linguistic dance · esoteric mysticism · food sovereignty · raise your voice · cultural protocol

CHILDREN'S VILLAGE
Children are part of the gathering, and there will also be a dedicated space for play, craft and activities, giving mothers the chance to join a practice, rest, or simply have a moment to themselves.

Expect this to feel different to a standard festival.

Wisdom has not always arrived in a scheduled one-hour workshop. It has moved while hands were making, food was cooking, children were nearby and people had enough time together for the deeper stories to emerge.

We will always be child-centred, relational, culturally respectful and nonhierarchical.

Cultural protocol

One of our primary aims is to be guided by the women of the Country on which we gather. The way they care for and relate to Country is something we are learning slowly and relationally, over years, through relationship rather than transaction. A portion of every ticket goes directly to cultural exchange with the Traditional Custodians of this land.

The practical details

Where: TBA within 3 hrs from Sydney

When: 18-20 December

Staying: Camping and van/vehicle sites on site. Bring your own tent, swag or vehicle

Food: All meals are included and shared communally. As part of your attendance, you will be asked to bring a designated food item to contribute to the supplies. Cooking together is part of the gathering, not a chore we outsource.

Facilities: Toilets, showers, complimentary glamping for elders provided on needs basis

Getting there: TBA

Bring: Full packing list here

Accessibility

Our long-term vision is to reduce the need for financial exchange every time someone seeks healing and community.

While we figure out how to get there, we have set aside a limited number of fully funded places for women who would otherwise be unable to attend because of the ticket cost.

As Red Thread Festival is gathering on Country, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women will be prioritised for these supported places. Any remaining places will be offered to other women experiencing financial barriers.

This is a short application to help us allocate the places fairly.

If you're offered a place, we'll ask for a $75 refundable deposit to secure your ticket, which will be returned after you attend. Failure to show up, or cancelling your scholarship position within 10 days of the program start date, will result in the loss of your deposit. All deposits are refunded within 14 days of the program end date. If the deposit itself is a barrier, please let us know in the application.

Tickets

Payment plans available here.

What comes after

The Festival is one layer of something larger

You come to the Festival: the entry point. Three days to feel what this is, rather than read about it.

You join a circle: smaller day gatherings and Matriarch Circles closer to home, where the relationships actually deepen.

You come to a retreat: a smaller, slower container where the culture is genuinely formed. This is where the real work happens.

You help steward it: the core collective, building the long-term infrastructure: land, care networks, the Hearth Fund.

Most people stop at one or two layers, and that's exactly as it should be. Community shouldn't demand everything from you. But if the Festival opens something, you'll know where to go next.

Wisdom keepers. Lived experience. Rooted in circle, silence and deep listening.

This is where we build the new, guided by the wisdom of the old.

With love,

The Red Thread Collective