Celebrating Culture: The Rainbow Serpent Retrospective

Article by: Laura Mason|@masonlazarus

Fri May 15, 2015 | 00:00 AM


Australia's Rainbow Serpent festival celebrates this heritage by fostering a culture of creativity through workshops featuring traditional artwork and movement,  spiritual exploration, and 5 stages featuring 24 hours of music if you want to experience chillout, psytrance or tech house music. The Rainbow Serpent is an extremely important creation figure in Aboriginal beliefs and mythology, with the serpent having said to have shape the landscape of the earth.

This retrospective takes us through the birth of the tradition and the celebration of history, through the campgrounds of the festival, to the behind-the-scenes construction of the festival itself.

The festival ethos can be summed up in the video's opening lines, that "...Everyone on earth is an Aborigine to the earth, and so, every new person and every Aborigine person's job is to look after the place. Be amongst it, be a part of it. So when you're trying to explain to people about culture, the best way is to bring them in, make them a part of it... and perhaps they will look at that, and think for themselves and even create their own culture."

Eclectic music, celebration of spirituality and a rich cultural backdrop are all what makes Rainbow Serpent such a unique festival with something for everyone.