Mettes placement at Rizomes Festival

At the end of June, I travelled to La Cellera de Ter, Girona, Spain to join the Rizomes festival team for their 2025 festival. During these incredible two weeks, I assisted the production crew, joined the runners team whenever necessary, and organized the outdoor kitchen making every run smoothy. Being completely immersed in the forest and mountains, there was nothing but Catalan culture, food, art, music and community.

Taking place in a tree plantation, Rizomes merges ecology, architecture and music into an incredible three-day experience for audiences. The festival started a couple of years ago with a group of friends who set up a small gathering in the plantation. With many of them having a background in architecture, the festival grew into a space for experimentation and alternative approaches to festival construction. A week prior to the festival, artists, architects and volunteers collectively build up the terrain using mainly natural materials that melt into the environment. Walking on the festival site, one can see and sense the attention to detail in the constructions build during this week (e.g. the sauna, bar and kitchen spaces, backstage area, dock in the river and art-installations). I received similar feedback from various people attending the festival, praising the festival for its innovative use of materials, space and visuals.

Next to the importance of architecture, the festival is also earning their position with the incredible light design for the mainstage and installations. I was lucky to assist the build-up crew for a couple of hours with moving some of the materials, seeing them putting up the various elements up in the trees has been one of the many incredible moments during this placement. At night, the combination of the music, light and the outside environment became even more immersive. Someone mentioned that for her the experience was ‘’like being inside a club with everything feeling so close and intense, but at the same time also being outside in the forest, giving you a sense of openness and space.’’ The immersive experience of dancing between the trees, the music, the lights and underneath the warm Spanish night sky is truly one of a kind.

For the audience and most of the volunteers, the mornings were slow. Halfway the mornings, people slowly started to get out of their tents for a swim or breakfast. For me, however, this was a bit different. I was taking the morning shift. While I was enjoying my breakfast on the first morning of the festival, a small group of people where still dancing in the early morning sun. For me, this was another highlight of my placement experience. Seeing people enjoy the festival and observing their seemingly endless energy while drinking my first coffee of the day was a beautiful moment.

As the terrain was as good as empty in the mornings, we were able to drive the van more easily moving things and materials to the different stages or the outdoor kitchen. I was assisted by two amazing volunteers who always jumped in the van with me with a big smile. The rest of the day I was able to enjoy the cold water of the river and see performances. Between the performances, I quickly jumped in the van and drove to the village to pick up materials or do some shopping if necessary. People attentively listened to the performance of Rita Payés. Together with her partner and parents, she was able to convey a personal, and touching story, even for those who did not understand the language she was singing in. One of my personal highlights was the performance by Tarta Relena, a music duo that experiment with traditional acapella sound and electronics. The enchanting vocals in combination with Andreu Fàbregas’ hypnotizing light-work created an truly astonishing experience. The night continued with performances from Błoto, a Polish house, spiritual jazz, improvised music, organic techno and defiant electronic quartet. The night continued with a number of DJ’s who made sure to increase the amount BPM, turning the forest into a dancefloor.

The festival operates with a large group of volunteers, who, together with architects  and artists, build all the main structures for the festival. The festival has an open structure, with crew, artists and volunteers eating and working together during the entire two weeks. This created a tight community feeling right from the start of the montage week. Together, we created water structures, a sauna, toilets, the bar and kitchen spaces and more. From conversations with volunteers, I understood how the festival and especially the montage week, serves as a place of community and togetherness. Regardless of the hard and physical work, people took their time to relax and to get to know each other better during breakfast, lunch, dinner or while taking a swim in the river. During the montage week, I was bringing around Merienda (a little snack at 18:00). A group of volunteers took their snack, and calmly sat down on the wooden planks they were carrying to take a little break from the hard work. These little moments created the sense of community and a relaxed atmosphere for people working at the festival. The crew and volunteers had an amazing, never ending energy collectively creating the festival space.

Sustainability is an important part of Rizomes. As the festival takes place in a tree plantation, the environment plays a key role in both the organization and experience of the festival itself. On their website, they explain that the ‘’festivals should be defined as a harmonious balance between human free expression, cultural promotion, and environmental protection’’. The festival makes use of for example reusable tableware and utensils, biodegradable soaps, dry toilets and builds structures with responsible materials such as wood, hemp, bamboo, fabrics, ropes. As a large part of climate impact is a result of car trips of audiences, the festivals offers round-trip journeys by bus and promotes car-pooling. This year, they incorporated a new element within the festival. At the entrance, the audiences received a little paper bag with seeds, which they could distribute over the terrain during their stay. The seeds where selected based on their ability to regenerate the soil of the terrain, aiming to restore the environment as good as possible after everyone leaves.

The TFA x EFA placement programme is a wonderful opportunity to immerse yourself in another festival to learn other ways to festival making. During these 10 days, I have learned a number of new ways to approach for example working atmosphere, sustainability and festival architecture. I also got to know so many new people; artists, crew and volunteers which I am already planning some (future) collaborations with.