A vibrant convergence of creators, Lucidity Festival transforms the Live Oak Campground into a waking dreamscape of color, light, and sound, turning a natural backdrop into a multi-disciplinary art gallery. And this year, Santa Barbara’s Lucidity Festival celebrates 10 years of art, music, performance, and community April 7-9. Marketing director and cofounder Jonah Haas describes the festival as an opportunity for artists, musicians, healers, and families to reconvene after the metaphorical winter hibernation, and a place for intentional self-expression.
In comparison to an event like Coachella, Lucidity offers a more community-based, multi-generational festival atmosphere. “We don’t have aspirations to be one of those big festivals,” says Haas. “We only have 5,000 people on our site. It’s very family-friendly, so we have toddlers and teenagers and twentysomethings and parents and elders and everything in between.”
This intimate environment is appealing to those craving a music festival with a more manageable, grounded vibe. “Other festivals didn’t have the same kind of friendliness that Lucidity had,” says Jenna Tico, who has taught contact improv and danced in a burlesque troupe in Lucidities past. “I know people who bring their kids, and there’s a space for them. It’s cool to see how people are making it part of their family culture.” She adds, “I hope it doesn’t become another place where people go to be hot and cliquey.”
The energy at Lucidity is about inclusion, intention, and creation. “It brings so many different people and has such a solid foundation of being an intentional event,” says Christiana Dommeyer, who has been attending and participating in Lucidity since the first year. “Besides awesome new music and the fact that it’s amazingly close to this beautiful place I call home, there’s something so expansive about people coming together to experience something new, different, and magical in the midst of a mundane life.”
During Dommeyer’s first year at the festival, she describes being attracted to dancing lights in the distance. Upon closer inspection, she realized it was a woman spinning poi, a type of fire dancing. Inspired by the skillful manipulation of the twirling flame, Dommeyer started spinning poi in her free time and is now a performer at the festival. “[The year] 2019 was the first year I performed on the stage — the same place I saw that girl conducting those beautiful lights. I got to be that girl onstage, taking up space, being seen…. It’s movement medicine for me, a meditative art, a flow art, so to be accepted to perform there was huge for me.”
Performance art is just one type of offering at the festival, along with art galleries and installations, immersive experiences, local food, workshops, healers, and oracles — and that’s not to mention the four stages of music featuring a variety of genres, including electronica, house, techno, folk, funk, and reggae. The word “transformational” is used in relation to the festival with attendees citing experiences that have opened their hearts and minds.
Chanté Glover, whose father, Ron Glover, is one of the festival organizers, says Lucidity offers an invitation to connect with others, but also to connect with yourself. “You can go to a sound healing bath; you can get a massage; you can dance it out…. It’s both playful and inviting toward vulnerability. All these different elements come together to make it a place where you can put your guard down and relax and release and be recharged when you go home.”
“Life keeps us really busy, asks us to go, go, go,” says Dommeyer. “It takes an extra little bit of effort to carve out time for joy and to carve out time for being curious to see what magic might be out there.”
This year, an important change to note is the festival parking situation. The recent weather has compromised the parking lots, so general parking and day passes are being sent to to 900 Airport Road in Santa Ynez, where attendees can get credentialed and take a shuttle to the festival. The shuttles will run regularly Thursday through Monday. And for those who can’t make or aren’t ready for the three-day camping festival experience, there are one- and two-day tickets available.
For more information on all things festival related, including the musical lineup, workshops, and experiences, visit lucidityfestival.com.
