Festival of Belonging at Wild River State Park

Composer / Director JG Everest and Wavelets Creative present the first ever "Festival Of Belonging" at Wild River State Park, an hour's drive north of the Twin Cities, across four weekends in August and September, 2025. Each weekend date of the Festival will offer a different slate of activities and outdoor site-specific performance installations, featuring a variety of multidisciplinary collaborations of dance, poetry, storytelling, live music, and the local history and ecology of this special place. The Festival centerpiece is the premiere presentation of Everest's latest spatial “symphony” installation, the site-specific Wild River Sound Garden, composed, recorded, and designed in the park, for the park, inspired by prairie, river, forest, wetland, the night sky, and more. Played through 30 different small speakers, each playing a different part of the whole piece of music, the music has been composed spatially and designed to be moved through and to give listeners a truly unique sensory experience embedded in the natural world. The Wild River Sound Garden will be running each day of the Festival from 9am-5pm in the wooded area outside the Wild River Visitor Center. Inside this immersive, self-guided creative environment will be a range of activities, at different times on certain days, including yoga and Qi Gong classes, Watercoloring and Print Making workshops, creative writing, "Human Wind Chimes" and roving live performances by the Free Range Orchestra. There will also be a series of nature walks and presentations held in the visitor center and on adjacent trails. All events are free, with MN State Parks vehicle permit. For more info: james@waveletscreative.org A full schedule and further details can be found at: https://waveletscreative.org/festival-of-belonging/ The Festival of Belonging is the culminating project of Everest’s yearlong MNPAiR Artist Residency at Wild River State Park, and is presented by Wavelets Creative with support from the Friends of Wild River State Park, The MN DNR, Forecast Public Art, The East Central Regional Arts Council (ECRAC), and the MNPAiR Artist Residency Program. This activity is made possible in part by a grant from the East Central Regional Arts Council with funds appropriated by the Minnesota State Legislature from its general fund.