NOT FOR PROFIT
Medicine is a registered Community Interest Company (C.I.C) and a not-for-profit organisation. Every penny of profit from the festival is directed towards empowering Indigenous peoples to preserve and protect their lands, traditions, and wisdom.
Since our first gathering in 2019, Medicine has raised over £109,000 for Indigenous communities around the world – from the Amazon Basin to Kenya, Colombia to Tibet. We support organisations including Amazon Watch, Survival International, the Boa Foundation, and earth percent, alongside direct contributions to communities and land protection projects across four continents.
The gathering exists to inspire and empower the deep regeneration of our hearts, our communities, and our world. We do this in grateful reciprocity for the immense generosity of the wisdom keepers and Indigenous peoples who have shaped Medicine from the very beginning. Despite the ways in which modern life continues to impact their communities, they offer us opportunities to learn, grow, and find our way home. For this, we are deeply grateful.
MISSION
Medicine creates spaces and opportunities, interweaving networks and resources to inspire and empower all those seeking to bring about a flourishingly diverse, just, and thriving world.
We bring together wisdom carriers, Indigenous communities, visionaries, artists, and solutionaries of all traditions to inspire and ignite a deeper understanding of how we can tread lightly and live harmoniously – as we support each other in the creation of the world we want to see.
VISION
To remember our birthright as a vital part of nature, living in sacred reciprocity – every breath – regenerating a world where all beings are honoured in their sovereignty, loved in their difference, and seen as vital participants in this divine interplay of life.
Our vision is a world where nature is cherished, peace is revered and difference is celebrated – where humankind has reclaimed the gifts of gratitude, and guardianship for all life.
CORE VALUES
In Service and Reciprocity
We gather to give back, and to receive with respect. Every penny of profit flows to the Indigenous communities, wisdom keepers, and wild places that make Medicine possible. This is the prayer of Medicine: to help those who need it most, and to sustain life on earth. We come not as takers but as students, honouring the wisdom we are shown only with consent, attribution, and care, holding the line between appreciation and appropriation. This is not charity but relationship.
Held in Ceremony
From the opening fire to the closing circle, ceremony is not a backdrop. It is the thread that holds us. Medicine is a meeting point of worlds, where Indigenous and western ways, ceremony and science, activist and academic find each other. We hold difficult subjects with courage and care, and forge new alliances in the space between.
Regeneration over Intoxication
Medicine is an alcohol-free gathering, and the atmosphere it creates is something rare: a nourishment of soul, joy, and genuine connection. We choose presence over escape, celebrating this gift of life fully awake, fully present, fully here.
Radical Acceptance
Race, gender, sexuality, ability, economics: we see each other as part of the same family. We hold a space of non-judgement where everyone is a vital participant and nobody is left at the edges. Through bursary, low-income, and free carer tickets, we work to widen the doorway and create safe(r) spaces for all.
Freedom of Expression
We make room for full expression, emotional and creative alike, meeting our edges and finding freedom in the courage to be vulnerable. Medicine offers the green and grassy canvas; our community brings the colour, in the offerings, the circles, and the songs that belong to everyone who gathers.
Regeneration & Reverence
We tread lightly on the land that hosts us. Plant-based, low-impact, and rooted in care, we choose to minimise our harm and consume closer to the earth. We work towards a regenerative culture that is resilient, self-reliant, and woven into the natural ecosystem, honouring biodiversity, interdependence, and the flourishing of all life.
Stronger Together
We are stronger together than we are alone. In a world that too often divides and isolates, we choose to come together and be kind, turning shared intention into action. Like mycelium beneath the forest floor, Medicine is the unseen network that connects and nourishes: people arrive as individuals and leave as movements, returning home to organise, create, and gather. Rather than keep this to ourselves, we help others root communities of their own, each unique to its land and people, spreading the medicine outward across the world.
Living the Question
We do not claim the answers. We stay in honest, ongoing inquiry, learning from wisdom carriers, from each other, and from the earth, nurturing curiosity, critical thinking, and a sense of agency. We hold one question above all, and we live it together: how can we be the medicine?
WHAT MAKES MEDICINE DIFFERENT
Medicine is not just a festival. It is a sacred gathering – held in ceremony and prepared to address the most vital question of our time, while deeply living the question: how can we be the medicine?
ALCOHOL-FREE
Medicine is the UK’s largest sober festival. No alcohol is sold or permitted on site. The result is an atmosphere of genuine openness, safety, and connection that press and attendees consistently describe as unlike anything they have experienced.
MEAT-FREE
All catering at the festival is plant-based – a commitment to treading lightly on the land that hosts us and to living in alignment with our values of ecological care.
FAMILY-FIRST
Children are not an afterthought at Medicine. A dedicated family area with a full programme runs throughout the gathering, and the sober environment creates a space where families feel genuinely safe and welcome.
HELD IN CEREMONY
From the opening fire to the closing circle, Medicine is woven together by ceremony. This is nota backdrop or aesthetic – it is the structure that holds the gathering and gives it meaning.
COMMUNITY-LED
We provide the green and grassy canvas. Our community brings the colour. The creative spaces, the spontaneous offerings, the late-night conversations around the fire – these are co-created by everyone who walks through the gates.
HOW WE WORK WITH INDIGENOUS PEOPLES
Medicine would not have come into existence without the significant input of our Indigenous friends. From the earliest conversations on the banks of the Rio Gregorio with the Yawanawa in 2017, to the ongoing counsel we receive today, Indigenous voices have been at the heart of everything we do.
We put Indigenous communities at the centre of our gathering as collaborators, teachers and honoured guests – not as programme feature, but as the reason Medicine exists. We prove a platform for people to learn from Indigenous leaders worldwide because we recognise that they are the ones protecting the biodiversity of our planet, carrying ancestral knowledge that the modern world urgently needs to hear.
Indigenous peoples are often the worst affected by climate change and ecological destruction. Without them, we face an immeasurable loss of our collective understanding of how to live in harmony with nature, protect our forests and waters, and keep the Earths natural resources in the ground. We also risk losing the cultural significance of the spiritual, earth-based wisdom they carry – wisdom that has sustained communities for thousands of years.
Over seven years, Medicine has woven deep relationships with Indigenous communities across multiple continents. Through the festival itself, through our online offerings under Voices of Medicine, and through direct donations from our community, we have raised vital funds for Indigenous land protection, cultural preservation, and community sovereignty. Every ticket purchased, every donation made, contributes to this ongoing work of reciprocity.
This is not charity. It is relationship. It is an acknowledgement that the well-being of Indigenous peoples and the well-being of the planet are one and the same – and that our role is to listen, to amplify, and to give back.
OUR IMPACT
Since our first gathering, Medicine has raised over £109,000 for Indigenous communities, ecological protection, wisdom preservation, and peace-building initiatives across found continents.
These funds have supported organisations including Amazon Watch, Survival International, the Boa Foundation, Earth Percent, and Cool Earth – alongside direct contributions to Indigenous communities from the Amazon Basin to Kenya, Colombia to Nepal, and beyond. From flood relief and clean water projects to cultural centres, legal support, and land protection – every penny of profit goes where it is needed most.
This work is made possible by our community. Through ticket donations, fundraising at the gathering, and contributions through Voices of Medicine, you help us walk in reciprocity with the people and places that make Medicine possible.
THE PRAYER OF MEDICINE
To give back, to help those that need it most, and to support and sustain life on earth.
This is why we gather. This is why we return. This is the thread that runs through every ceremony, every song, every conversation and fire.
How can we be the medicine?