Rainbow Rising Queer Wellness Festival
Join us in queer community for a weekend of joy, healing and connection
Select date and time
Location
Aarons Campsite
Aaron Hill Farm Cragg Vale HX7 5TX United KingdomRefund Policy
Agenda
5:00 PM - 6:00 PM
Friday: Opening Ceremony
6:00 PM - 8:00 PM
Friday: Campfire Storytelling and Poetry
6:00 PM - 11:00 PM
Friday: Open Mic
9:00 AM - 10:00 AM
Saturday: Morning Sharing Circle
Cormorant Cares
11:00 AM - 1:00 PM
Saturday: Somatic Breathwork Ceremony
The Healing Pathway
11:00 AM - 1:00 PM
Saturday: Self Care Skills, Practice and Movement
Yogisio
2:00 PM - 4:00 PM
Saturday: Queer Approaches to Food and Flourishing
Lou Aphramor, Well Now
2:00 PM - 4:00 PM
Saturday: Shamanic Storytelling with the Ancestors
Roana Brown
4:00 PM - 6:00 PM
Saturday: Shamanic Breathwork and Sound Journey
Neil Christey, The Holistic College
4:00 PM - 6:00 PM
Saturday: Creative Writing using Chance
Goodnight The Skye
6:00 PM - 8:00 PM
Saturday: Campfire Storytelling and Poety
7:15 PM - 8:15 PM
Saturday: Sage Sana
8:30 PM - 9:30 PM
Saturday: Cobalt Tales
9:45 PM - 10:45 PM
Saturday: Sandy Bloomers
11:00 PM - 12:00 AM (+1 day)
Saturday: Weird Brains
6:00 PM - 7:00 PM
Saturday: Untitled Woman
9:00 AM - 10:00 AM
Sunday: Sharing Circle
Cormorant Cares
10:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Sunday: Generational Wisdom Circle
Cormorant Cares
About this event
- Event lasts 11 hours
🌈✨ Rainbow Rising Queer Wellness Festival ✨🌈
Friday 29th – Sunday 31st August
Aaron’s Campsite, Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire
Has the weekly grind got you down? Is your soul depleted from the constant stream of chaos and negativity that is modern life? Come and recharge your energy, ground yourself in community, and dedicate some time to your own wellbeing at Rainbow Rising Queer Wellness Festival.
We are a gathering of LGBTQIA+ spiritual seekers, wellbeing practitioners, musicians and performers, making time in our year for a weekend of queer connection, community, and soul-deep nourishment.
What to expect:
By day:
- Holistic, spiritual and wellness workshops
- Breathwork, movement, sound healing, ritual, and more
- Sharing circles and creative workshops
- A supportive space to connect, rest, and recharge
By night:
- Live music, bands, and performers
- Campfire storytelling and poetry
- Queer joy, creative expression, and celebration under the stars
Our workshops, live music and performances
Somatic breathwork with The Healing Pathway:
Evan Curwen of The Healing Pathway stands as a compassionate guide on the journey to holistic well-being. As a trauma-informed wellness coach and counsellor, Evan is dedicated to nurturing mental health through a blend of holistic practices.
Evan will be bringing their breathwork ceremony to Rainbow Rising festival. This immersive session offers a guided somatic breathwork experience designed to help you release emotional blockages, reconnect with your body and access deeper layers of clarity, peace, and personal insight. Whether you’re new to breathwork or a seasoned practitioner, this ceremony is an invitation to come home to yourself through presence, sound, and breath.
Yoga, breathing and self care with YogisioUK:
As a yoga practitioner and guider for over 20 years, Yogisio has always been intrigued by the way body and mind responds to the yoga practice. It always left them and students feeling calm, peaceful, alert but relaxed. That curiosity has lead them to where they are today, practicing physiotherapy in long term health conditions with the understanding of how important self regulation is physically, mentally and emotionally. Integrating knowledge and experience of both professions has been a very natural step in providing holistic care to all walks of life. Their personal journey in finding Yoga and their physiotherapy experience has been a profound learning opportunity. This continual leaning and curiosity has enabled authenticity in delivery to both students and patients.
Yogisio will be running a workshop on the importance of self-care through proper relaxation, proper breathing and education on nervous system regulation.
This will include:
- Discussion and education around the Autonomic nervous system (ANS) and the importance self regulation through proper relaxation
- Gentle mobility/movement using yoga techniques
- Breathing mechanics/techniques/exercises.
- Relaxation using body scan method.
Shamanic breathwork and sound healing with The Holistic College:
The excellent Neil Christey from The Holistic College will be offering a Shamanic breathwork session with sound healing for dessert. Neil is a skilled health consultant and clinical hypnotherapist who believes that true freedom, health, and happiness can be achieved by resolving and integrating conflicts, traumas, and trials of life to increase the quality of living. He is a registered member of the Complimentary Medical Association (MCMA), the College of Sound Healing for his holistic sound healing practice, The Global Professional Breathwork Alliance for his breathwork Practice, The British Society of Clinical Hypnosis (MBSCH) and The Complimentary and Natural Healthcare Council (CNHC) for his Clinical Hypnotherapy practice.
This shamanic breathwork and sound healing session will begin with an invitation to connect with your spirit guide. They will bring you to meet with your inner self and together you'll embark on a journey to bring more of your own authentic self expression into being. This is a high energy opportunity for expression of spirit.
Queering diet for wellness with The Radical Dietitian:
Lou Aphramor's approach, Well Now, envisions a world where no-one is starved of food, company, dignity or security. This is about more than ‘being healthy’ as an individual. In this world, people of all shapes, genders, ages, and identities are treated with respect. Creating this world means we need to alter our thoughts, habits and structures that get in the way of dignity, equity, compassion, and health-justice.
In Well Now Lou uses food and body stories as the entry point to some key questions, including: how can we heal personally and collectively? How does trauma impact eating, self-worth and wellbeing? Where does white supremacy fit into all this?
The theme for this workshop is: Binary thinking underpins gender stereotypes, but how is it relevant to eating? In this workshop we will identify how taken-for-granted binary categories such as healthy and unhealthy, good and bad food, can lead to a feeling of stuckness and explore alternative, queerer, ways of approaching food and flourishing.
Creative writing with Goodnight The Skye:
Rhiannon-Skye is a published poet and award-winning spoken word artist, whose work has been featured across print, radio and stage, from Radiophrenia Glasgow to The Blue Heron Review. They have led poetry and spoken word workshops on themes such as identity, queerness, mental health and politics, and recently published three interconnected zines entitled A Posy For Balance
In this workshop they will be facilitating a creative writing experience, using the mechanics of Dungeons and Dragons to randomise parts of the process, introduce a sense of play, and make idea generation less scary.
Sharing and generational wisdom circles with Cormorant Cares:
Tom from Cormorant Cares is a celebrant, shamanic practitioner, and seasoned pagan, with twenty years experience of creating ritual and ceremony. He is also a trained facilitator and has many years experience running support groups and safe sharing spaces for the LGBTQIA+ community.
Tom will be running daily sharing circles at Rainbow Rising, where we will be gathering together to both listen and be heard. Working with Spirit, we will be speaking what needs to be spoken, and soaking in the wisdom of our beautiful community. He will also be facilitating a generational wisdom circle. There are very few opportunities in the queer community to communicate across different age groups, to learn from our elders and from those who are more fresh-faced than we might be! This circle will create a container for the wisdom of all ages.
Shamanic journey to the ancestors with Roana Brown:
Roana Brown is a shamanic practitioner, healer, reiki master and facilitator. She will be leading us on a shamanic storytelling adventure, to meet with our ancestors. Using the combined power of storytelling, guided meditation, and shamanic journey, you'll be led through the recesses of your soul to find your inner truth and power. Learn from the wisdom of your ancestors and connect with the strength of the elements in this transformational workshop.
Regulating your nervous system with Rachel Sewell:
Rachel Sewell is an experienced NVT practitioner, healer and therapist. In their workshop they will be supporting us all through an exploration of our nervous systems.
They will share information on the nervous system and how the fascia influences it. You will learn a fun and simple way to check if your nervous system is regulated or dysregulated. There will also be multiple open discussions throughout to help you discover what dysregulates your nervous system and what steps you can take to start regulating it.
Bands and performers include:
- Cobalt Tales are a vibrant, entertaining, female duo based in Sheffield. Through a wide variety of styles, (ballad, country, folk, rock, soul and a capella), Pat and Nuala follow threads through the tales of lives and ancestry, singing of people, places, events and experiences that have made us who we are. Expect compelling, soulful vocals, warm, acoustic guitar and plaintive harmonica, nifty rolling bass and swingy scat, dramatic a capella harmonies, haunting low whistle and entertaining banter. They deliver 'music from the heart that stirs the soul' to build a warm relationship with the audience bringing joy and spirit to their performance.
- Weird Brains are an all-female 5-piece band from the foothills of the Pennines covering hits from Billie Eilish, Blondie, Wet Leg, Florence & The Machine, Pixies, Amy Winehouse, Lady GaGa, Marlena Shaw, Dusty Springfield and more…
- Sandy Bloomers is a show-stopping entertainer bringing the sass and the crass! She will be bringing her full cabaret repertoire of pop, vintage and theatre classics for your delight and delectation
- Sage Sana will be bringing her gentle blend of soul folk music to uplift and comfort.
- Untitled Woman is from a small, working class mining town in the north of England. She started making music to speak - or sing - the truth of a life lived without ever having been fully present, by bringing her music to the stage, where all is told. She will be performing a small music ensemble of electro-based sounds, songs, beats and voice improvising, to express their down tempo music from the heart
Frequently asked questions
The campsite is a level field, and the venue has ramps and a disabled toilet. If you have specific accessibility requirements please send us a message and we'll do everything we can to make your weekend as easy as possible
Yes! Tents and small camper vans are very welcome to camp, and camping is included in the weekend ticket. If you have a large camper van or motorhome, please email contact@cormorantcares.co.uk with the length of the vehicle to ensure we'll be able to fit you in the field
All of the tickets include entry to workshops and performances. The weekend tickets cover the entire weekend, from Friday lunchtime until Sunday, including camping. The Saturday day tickets cover all the workshops and performances on Saturday, but do not include camping.
Organised by
Cormorant Cares is a celebrancy service run by Tom Shillito. He offers ceremonies and rituals for all of life's milestones, as well as running regular pagan and shamanic workshops and retreats.
Tom has been writing ceremonies and rituals for the pagan community for over 15 years. His interest in professional celebrancy began when he wrote his own wedding ceremony in 2016. Since then he has written and lead a wide variety of ceremonies, from weddings and funerals to pregnancy celebrations and new home blessings. He is a qualified Shamanic practitioner and Reiki healer.