Now I am part of the executive directorate of the All-Russian Family Tourism Festival "More Than a Journey" and increasingly think about why I love festivals as a format. Previously, it seemed silly to me — I know what I want to see and hear, why would I buy a pig in a poke, where there might be a lot of unnecessary things that I overpay for, but over time my opinion changed.

Festivals, first and foremost, offer the opportunity to gain a comprehensive experience. You can come here for music of one genre and get a complete picture of it thanks to a curated selection of artists, or learn several related skills at once if the festival is, for example, thematic. In recent days, while working at the festival, I learned to shoot a bow, play pétanque and gorodki, learned more about life in a tent than I knew before, and listened to lectures from people who have traveled around the world twice.

In ordinary life, such a set of impressions is difficult and expensive to assemble on your own. You need to find experts, venues, activities, routes, and people...

At a festival, this work has already been done for the audience, because any good festival is the result of the labor of a large number of very experienced people: curators, program directors, producers, lecturers, artists, instructors, volunteers, coordinators.

While there are plenty of reasons to be despondent in the world, a festival provides a rare opportunity to see another side of reality: people who know how to do, tell, teach, play, sing, lead, and create a living environment around themselves. It nourishes. Love festivals.