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Around 600 colourful, loving and questing queers of all ages from the entire LGBTQI+ rainbow tribe will gather in the beautiful Devon countryside for five days of summer fun and cosmic connections at Queer Spirit Festival in Bridwell Park, Devon from 17th to 21st August 2023. 

Queer Spirit Festival is a five day camping festival featuring performances, workshops, DJs, ceremonies, fire circles, meditations, a sacred sexuality temple, cafes, a healing area and much more. The festival takes place at Bridwell Park in Devon, easily accessed via Tiverton Parkway Rail and the M5.

Emerging out of decades of community-building and activism, Queer Spirit Festival provides a safe space for LGBTQ+ people to explore spirituality, self-development and healing. 

“An illuminating haven of heart-healing, earth-grounding, fire-gazing, beautiful surprises and a return to our spirit-home”

Queer Spirit is a nature-based, heart-focused festival celebrating the creative, loving, magical Spirit of LGBTQ+ people, promoting well-being, spirituality and healthy relationships in the community, and spreading awareness of the hidden spiritual history of queer people in service such as healers, priestesses and shamans in pre-Christian cultures around the world.

queer spirit

Their third festival in 2019 was in Northamptonshire, where people from all sections of the Queer rainbow tribe came for five days of ceremonies, workshops, performances, fire circles and dancing. There were cafés, kid’s spaces, meditation and healing areas, a sauna and the very popular adult-only, Sacred Sexuality Temple. 

Many glowing, enthusiastic testimonials from festival attendees can be found on the website testimonial page at https://queerspirit.net/about/testimonials

The Queer Spirit team have produced three well-received, ground-breaking events, building on the roots put down and skills developed since the 1980s in community groups such as the Radical Faeries, Edward Carpenter Community and Queer Pagan Camp.

Festival organiser Shokti told QX, “At Queer Spirit, we celebrate creative, loving, embodied spirituality – opening our hearts, expanding our minds and celebrating our bodies through a rich and diverse programme featuring performers and facilitators from the UK and abroad. Meeting in nature, we affirm the naturalness of Queer sexualities and identities in a magically held atmosphere that encourages engagement, open-heartedness, communication and compassion. We honour the differences and celebrate the common ground between trans people, lesbians, bisexuals, gay men and others who cannot be defined by or confined to any such category. 

queer spirit

Queer Spirit Festival is a liberating realm of self-expression, exploration and community creation, soul expansion and finding an inner peace that comes from communing with nature and honouring our inner divine light, from being able to be ourselves fully.”

The theme for the 2023 festival is Reclaiming Queer Nature.

Shokti continues, “The idea that same-sex love and gender variance are somehow ‘against nature’ developed over the centuries in the Judaeo-Christian tradition, in sharp contrast to the holistic worldviews of the pagan cultures of the ancient world and of traditional belief systems around the planet, many of which celebrated same-sex love and genderfluidity as sacred, and none of which came up with the notion that the Creator could create something in error. This idea became so deeply embedded in the western mind that queerness went from being regarded as a sin into a crime and then sickness. Only in the late 20th century have queer people gained enough strength and visibility to change this story. Queers worldwide have proclaimed our PRIDE in who we are – at Queer Spirit Festival, we take the next step: RECLAIMING QUEER NATURE as entirely natural, spiritual and magical! Earth-based, body-honouring traditions worldwide have long recognised ‘third-gender’ or ‘intermediate types’ as having spiritual power that benefited the whole community. At Queer Spirit, you will find artists, activists, facilitators, and healers exploring that ancient queer power and reclaiming it to serve the world today.

The spiritual challenge of being queer is to embrace our gender fluidity or our queer sexuality as a call from the soul to know ourselves fully and completely, to search for our truths, for the keys that unlock who we are, all our unique talents and gifts – as beings created by nature experiencing life in all its queer beauty and joy.” – Shokti

queer spirit

Check out queerspirit.net and sign up for the mailing list to get up-to-date information.

Discount tickets available

Tickets come in a range of prices: Supporter tickets (which include a donation to help fund tickets for people on low or no income), Weekend tickets, Concessions and until February 9th discounted Rising Spirit tickets at only £140/£90concession for a full festival ticket! The festival has a dedicated Access and Welfare team to help make the festival accessible for all. 

Buy tickets to Queer Spirit Festival here.

Volunteers Needed

They need volunteers in the cafe and production team, and they have a bursary fund to which anyone unable to afford a ticket or help as a volunteer can apply for access. They invite contributions to this fund from generous patrons.

“Come to Queer Spirit Festival to soak up the nourishing energies of nature as we connect, dance, play, heal, discover and explore – as we reclaim queer nature, build community and embrace queerness as a sacred part of nature and the cosmos!”

https://queerspirit.net

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