07 Dec 2015

Let’s strip away the bits and pieces of a festival: the lights, the stage décor, the costumes and the music, all gone. What’s left is an idea, the core focus for why the creators thought this event was going to be a good one. Lost Paradise is the living, breathing birth child of someone’s brain and somehow it turned out to be one of the most unique festivals ever dawned.

I’ve always wanted to be on the other side of the creation door. How must it feel to watch your imagination come to life? How sick it must be to watch the faces of us attendees play a part in this much bigger idea? Maybe one day I’ll know, but until then I’m happy to keep enjoying the manifestations at Lost Paradise.

Festival families know you better than most. They’ll see you pillow fight wearing the rainbow on your face and wings on your back. They’ll hold your hand while you dance in a tutu and sleep next to you on the grass because you wanted to watch the sunrise together. Curiosity builds life-changing experiences and Lost Paradise prides itself on cultivating your inner-child. Also, they don’t discriminate against age so you may very well be pillow fighting with a 6-year-old.

Art and creativity are celebrated alongside the music and you’ll find yourself more in-tune with your surroundings than anywhere else. I know I did. The chase for the perfect festival experience leans toward comparing themselves to Coachella, but in this situation I can’t understand why.

Can I say Lost Paradise is better? Yes I can because I’ve done both and here’s what I’ve found. The rise of the boutique music festival does it bigger and better by doing it smaller and with a quirk. Coachella, any festival really, that massive and that oversold is incredible but can become redundant to the purpose. I’m not sitting beside strangers at lavishly long tables to dine (thank you Lost Paradise) or joining the morning  with a laughter yoga class–there’s no way to describe these experiences until you’re there, sitting beside me and just laughing.

The creators of Lost Paradise have taken the likes of Wilderness Festival, Festival No. 6 & Coachella and used it as inspiration to give birth to the next generation of cultural experiences that embellishes music with art and creative expression. While enjoying all that any music festival has to offer there had tended to be an unwavering pull for something more and Lost Paradise is the answer. I didn’t know it’s what I wanted until I left.