Annual Maui SOURCE Festival Coming This Month

By Madeline Ziecker

A snapshot from a performance at one of the previous SOURCE festivals. Courtesy photo.

SOURCE, Maui’s annual four-day interactive arts, music, and healing festival, will begin on Friday, February 17 and run until Monday, February 20.

SOURCE is a festival modeled off of Burning Man, where attendees are encouraged to share their art and ideas in an eco-friendly, community-oriented environment.

This year’s festival will be held at YMCA’s Camp Keanae and will be themed “Circus of Dreams.”

Festival attendees will camp for four days with food and drinking water provided. Several engaging events have been planned for SOURCE 2012, including round-the-clock music by live performers and DJ’s throughout the festival as well as lectures, workshops, and personal practices being held in the “Womb Room.”

Several art installations and theme camps will also be set up around the grounds. One of this year’s more creative highlights will be a life-sized game of the popular iPhone application Angry Birds, complete with stackable boxes, birds, and a giant slingshot.

An art installation created at SOURCE. Courtesy photo.

Another exciting feature this year will be Camp Exotica & B.S.O.S. Radio, where attendees can participate in a live broadcasting of the entire festival that will be played in certain areas on the grounds as well as online.

Festival creator Ben Holt says that SOURCE is a very Maui-centric event. The festival was founded when Holt began discussing his vision of creating more opportunities for interactive art on Maui with some of his close friends.

The festival has been running for five years with an annual attendance of 300 to 500 people participating in the event, not including volunteers.

Holt says that it takes a full year to organize SOURCE, with weekly gatherings and 20-30 supporting events.

An average day at SOURCE. Courtesy photo.

As far as festival safety issues go, SOURCE organizers implement safety preparations up to six months ahead of time. The only issue at past SOURCE festivals has been dehydration, which the festival team is keeping a close eye on this year by providing plenty of water throughout the grounds of Camp Keanae.

In looking forward to the event, Holt says, “I look for incredible surprises each year- joyous offerings from the community that I didn’t expect and often had no clue about.

“I am looking forward to everything from marching bands, to local foods,  ninjas in the trees, pirates, laughter, meditation to moonlight yoga, sustainability lessons, and radical new technologies.

“That one piece of incredible music wafting out of the tall grass late on Saturday night is something that one has to stumble through the brush to find.”

For information, details, and tickets for the SOURCE festival, visit sourcemaui.com. Passes  to the festival are $200 per person as of February 1. The last place and time to purchase membership (which includes the full festival pass) in person for $180 will be at SOURCE fundraiser event “Our Beats are Broken” at Casanova’s on Thursday, February 2.