Medicine Festival: touch, surrender & co-creation

It’s now been just over a week since we landed from the beautiful closing ceremony of Medicine Festival, and we are still processing its invitations - and brimming with gratitude to have contributed to it.

Medicine is always so medicinal & therapeutic: beautiful, authentic, gentle, nourishing, inspiring and touching. It radiates such precious joy and beauty, while continually suggesting ways we might invite positive change into our own lives and communities. We’re excited to explore how we can carry some of those teachings forward at Fox&Badge.

Huge kudos to the incredible Medicine team for battling substantial climatic obstacles to bring such ambitious dreams to fruition - and create so much bliss and joy in the process.

From rave to ritual

A few older friends and Fox&Badge community members sounded a little surprised when we said we’d be offering Fox&Badge experiences at Medicine - perhaps not fully au fait with how our work has been evolving, or wondering how something born partly in nightlife might fit within such a conscious, therapeutic space.

But we first found nightclubs as spaces of deep healing, acceptance, expression and release: lifted aloft by the divine vibrations of somatic basslines, set loose in the wild play of light, sound and human energy.

Over the last decade, we have sought to build within them unique spaces of liberation and transformation - gradually expanding from rave to ritual, and carving richer, more immersive and multidimensional experiences.

These days, Fox&Badge is so much more than a dancefloor. We increasingly marry the liberating energies of ecstatic nightlife with the care and presence of therapeutic space, incorporating massage, tantra, somatic work, collective song, live music, grief release, wellbeing and worship - while moving more and more into daytime, sober immersive ritual and workshops.

Our core quest, whether at Medicine Festival or Studio 338, remains the same: to connect, liberate and transform.

We feel blissfully attuned with Medicine because we too seek to create experiences that can be medicinal, therapeutic and transformational. As a team we are almost fully sober these days, and deeply appreciate the truthfulness and presence that brings. We have always revered the sacredness of eros, while increasingly exploring its gentler, more innocent and collective manifestations.

We prefer art to entertainment; sensuality to sex; ritual to rave; gratitude to gratification; presence to avoidance; devotion to distraction.

We want to be wild, crazy, honest & free - while cherishing depth and meaning, bliss and reverence, wellbeing and transformation; finding ways to deeply connect and co-create, and perhaps dream together of better worlds.

4 journeys at The Haven

At Medicine, we were deeply honoured to have the opportunity to take over 500 people on what we hope was a transformative journey.

Across Friday & Saturday evenings, we hosted four ritualistic workshop sessions at the Haven from 8–11pm, and were so touched that many of our guests chose not only to stay for both sessions each night, but to return again the following evening.

Our focus across both nights was touch, intimacy and connection: carefully choreographed sessions wrapped within a ritualistic container, each commencing with performance and ending in mass collective movement.

The offering was tactile and tantric, but also deeply intuitive and emergent. We deliberately set ourselves some significant challenges. What might it be like to run an entire night fully blindfolded? Could hundreds of us sing and touch together in the dark? Could we lovingly lose ourselves in a pile of writhing bodies?

And how could we carefully structure all of that to make it feel safe, held and joyous?

We dressed simply as a team - red robes and facial stripes on Friday; black on Saturday. As guests queued outside, we passed amongst them with blessings, fruit, gifts and invitations, gently checking agreements around consent before they entered. Deep apologies to the 100 or so people we had to turn away once we reached capacity.

Friday: The Loosening

Friday began more gently, with a slightly edgier version of Dominik Schnell’s Heart Wave dance.

From there, Alex Haw and Lauren Katalinichled a series of playful, conscious tactile explorations - our hearts melting as our guests gradually melted into one another.

Nik Yourknots then introduced the group to shibari and loving ties, bringing the evening towards a tender, tangled finale.

We always seek to enable our guests to build trust with strangers and experience the rewards of courage. Quite a few people came up to us in the days before the workshops - and again on the day itself - nervous about what they might encounter.

We were incredibly moved by all those who nevertheless took the dive, surrendered into the unknown and explored this strange ocean of pleasure and connection with us.

Saturday: Into the Dark

Saturday took us deeper.

For the entire three-hour journey, our guests were fully blindfolded.

We dressed in black, mirroring their strips of blindfold with black stripes of makeup, and surrendered sight in order to liberate the other senses.

We began with blindfolded tantric chanting, led by our beautiful musical collaborator Yush!, singing and toning together as four huge paired circles slowly rotated partners and moved steadily towards closer connection and touch.

From there the journey became increasingly wild.

Our guests gently melted and intermelded. They grew into trees. They foraged as woodland creatures. They transformed into oceans and whales and - one of our favourite moments - a vast swathe of worms, lovingly wriggling limbless across one another.

We had originally planned to segue into edgy sensory play with natural waxes, but the site-wide fire-safety ban on any flame - our hearts went out to Medicine and all the sacred firekeepers - prompted a last-minute swerve towards ice & oil, gently bestowing a range of thermal and textural sensations.

Even now, remembering it brings an immense feeling of gratitude: for the opportunity, for the extraordinary presence of our guests, and for the beauty of witnessing hundreds of people choose curiosity, surrender and courageous connection.

We were also deeply grateful for the feedback that followed - in messages, in conversations around the Festival, and from people who sought us out afterwards. We continue to welcome any & all reflections.

“Your workshops were incredible; truly life-changing. I’ve taken a huge, huge step forward in being able to be present with others. We have to ask the festival for more of what you do.”

“My favourite experiences of the whole festival. Really pushed me out of my comfort zone in a growth way, but felt so empowering and safe.”

“Unbelievable - we felt transformed! The best thing we experienced there - thank you so much!”

“Such powerful workshops. They were my highlight at Medicine 🧡”

“I felt so safe and free, and went so deep. I cannot thank you enough. Where can I do more with you?”

The beautiful organism behind it all

Co-creation is one of our greatest joys: flowing into creation and service alongside people we love and respect.

We were extraordinarily blessed that so many within our community who were already attending Medicine offered to step forward and help, expanding our crew into a beautiful team of around 20 loving souls.

There is something deeply moving about watching a group become an organism - sensing what is needed, supporting one another, stepping forward and falling back, holding hundreds of people together with care.

Lead Hosts: Alex Haw& Lauren Katalinich

Our ecstatic thanks to:

Co-Facilitators: Dominik Schnell / Heart Wave / Yush! / Nik Yourknots

Sound & Musicians: Ben Koppelman, our resident sound artist, who beautifully curated almost ten hours of sonic journey across the weekend, Leila Katalnykova, Mischa Huijsmans, Timothee Mille, Stella Sezon& Brailla May

Spaceholders & Performers: Chris Bullzini, Tatiana, Naila Hazell, Pasha / Morgan Swan, Santosh Pawar, Veronika Kuzminskaia, & Olga Ivanova

Decor: Georgia Somerville & Jiri Moravek

Our musicians, singers and spaceholders performed an extraordinary number of roles across the weekend: performing on stage and outside, creating processions, playing music for hours, singing and chanting, racing towards every raised hand and tender heart, distributing rope and ice and oil and grapes and blessings, and tending to every need they possibly could.

And deepest thanks to the entire Medicine Festival family: founder Zak Avery for his open-hearted initiation and encouragement; curator Jo Bennett for her trust, support and guidance; Haven stage managers Sara and Rosanna and their caring team; everyone at the artist support hub; and custodian and founder Josh, the land, and all beings of Wasing, who have hosted us so generously and graciously. Medicine had to overcome mammoth obstacles to make this year possible - drought, fire risk and all the practical complexity that comes with trying to manifest a temporary vision of a more beautiful, connected and attuned world. We are deeply grateful that they did.

Most of all, thank you to every guest who trusted us enough to enter these strange little worlds with such radiant surrender, adventure and generosity. You still melt our hearts.

We would love to continue this work - with Medicine, with this community, and in all the other places where people are hungry for deeper connection, liberation and transformation.

Medicine Festival is now moving to an every-two-years rhythm, with earlybird “Badger” tickets for Medicine Festival 2028 already available.

And for those wanting to journey with Fox&Badge sooner, we will be offering some of this intimate connective work in various forms of immersive experience & workshop at our epic upcoming signatur event - BACCHANAL, Feast of Dionysus, on Saturday 19th September, 10pm-6am at Studio 338 - our last large event for over 6 months -

Our next smaller workshop-centred exploration of tactility, intimacy & connection will be our second RITUAL for Samhain: a conscious, sober daytime gathering from 3–9pm on Saturday 7 November; tickets coming soon.

Until then: enormous love and gratitude to everyone who built, held, entered and surrendered to these worlds with us! May we all meet again soon.

❤️ Fox&Badge