It feels like it’s been a while since I checked in with this blog (though it was only a bit over a month ago). In the last few years I’ve been doing NaPoWriMo (National Poetry Writing Month) in April. NaPoWriMo, led by Maureen Thorson, is inspired by NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) which traditionally happens in November, and the idea is to write a new poem every day in April.
This year I spent most of March and April preparing to attend ConFest to run the Life Drawing Tent, as part of the Arts Village. ConFest, described as Australia’s leading alternative lifestyle festival, is held near Moulemein in New South Wales. It attracts a wide array of people who create a vast, temporary village at the site over the Easter long weekend. I don’t know exactly how many people were there this year, but it could have been as many as 5,000!
There are a number of villages at ConFest, including Permaculture, Nudies, Acrotown and the Arts Village. I was part of the Arts Village, and was there to lead the Life Drawing Tent. As you would know, I’ve been heavily involved in life model advocacy since I started modelling in 2014, including a stint as President of the Life Models’ Society. In times past, the Life Drawing Tent had been run by a stalwart arts activist, Max, however he passed away. In 2024, there were concerns raised about how the space was run, and a previous LMS Committee colleague asked me if I would be involved in creating a village specifically to look after the Life Drawing Tent.
It was a big undertaking, and we probably didn’t have enough time to really do everything we wanted to, but we got a crew of 11 volunteers to come up (including myself). We ran Introduction to Life Modelling sessions each morning, and had both tutored and untutored life drawing all day. If I was going to guess, I’d say we had about 100 models over the four days, and 300-500 artists. We were so busy that we frequently ran out of drawing boards, and spots to sit.
It was stressful and intense to organise, but the feedback from people in the tent was wonderful. We created a space where many people were able to try modelling for the first time (I’d guess 60% were new) in a safe, curated environment. We invited people to draw who maybe hadn’t done much for a while, as well as those who were clearly very practiced. A few sessions were tutored, with experienced drawing teachers guiding artists to create something.
One of the reasons we had such a large crew was to ensure that we were able to keep an eye out for anyone lurking around. Life drawing, and ConFest in general, can be a loving, beautiful village experience, but it can also be a target for predators, so we made it our business to ensure that people in the life drawing tent were behaving in a suitable manner.
The last time I went to ConFest was Easter 2011 (I had to go digging through my photo archive to find that), and I have changed quite a lot in that time. I was very glad to have a job to do, to help structure my time, though I did manage to get to a couple of workshops run by other people, including macrame water bottle holders, a mandala drawing, the secrets of flirting (which was a bit weird tbc). If I go back, I’d like to try to get a few more workshops in, though I didn’t have a whole lot of extra energy after looking after the life drawing tent and our crew.
We’ll see if I’m involved in running the crew for Spring Confest this year, but I’ll probably be there for Easter 2026–given how popular it was, we’ll be looking to expand the tent. Hopefully we will have learned some techniques to reduce the amount of work we’re having to do, and to help things run more efficiently, but overall it was a very successful return to ConFest. A big thank you to the Arts Village coordinators who welcomed us into their space, and supported our vision of a thriving, engaging and beginner-friendly space for life drawing.
*Photo by Syd, a member of the crew, because I was so caught up in being present in the festival that I didn’t take any photos!
Fleur Blüm 
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