Make Good Festival returns to Bundanon in May 2026 with talks, workshops, performances and creative gatherings shaped by art and social change.
Before dawn settles fully over the Shoalhaven River, the landscape around Bundanon tends to hold a particular stillness. Mist drifts above the waterline. The outlines of gum trees emerge slowly against pale morning light. Kangaroo tracks mark damp ground near walking paths, while the sound of birdsong carries across the valley long before conversation begins.
On the weekend of 30–31 May 2026, this quiet stretch of regional New South Wales will again become home to the Make Good Festival – a two-day gathering shaped less around spectacle than around attention. Artists, writers, performers, makers, environmental thinkers, and visitors will move between workshops, talks, performances, and communal meals across the Bundanon grounds, exploring what it might mean to build a more thoughtful future through creativity.
Now entering its second year, Make Good Festival arrives at a moment when many cultural events seem increasingly concerned with urgency and scale. Bundanon’s approach feels notably different. Here, ideas unfold slowly: through conversations beside fireplaces, movement sessions at sunrise, poetry readings beneath open skies, and practical workshops where hands remain as involved as minds.
Make Good Festival Begins With Place
The setting shapes nearly everything about Make Good Festival. Located roughly three hours south of Sydney, Bundanon occupies land long associated with artistic retreat, ecological restoration, and cultural exchange. Visitors arriving from the city will leave motorways behind gradually, passing dairy farms, forested hills, and stretches of river country before reaching the site itself.
Unlike urban festivals where audiences move rapidly between crowded venues, Make Good Festival appears designed around slower transitions. A morning cultural walk may lead directly into a poetry discussion. A workshop in coffin weaving may sit beside a conversation about grief, ecology, or forgiveness. Music performances unfold outdoors in changing weather and shifting light.
This year’s program, curated by guest artistic director Danielle Harvey, includes more than thirty events spanning talks, workshops, performances, food experiences, and cultural gatherings. Yet the atmosphere seems less segmented than interconnected – ideas echoing quietly across the weekend rather than existing in isolation.
The festival title itself carries a kind of practical optimism. “Make good” suggests repair rather than perfection. It implies action, process, and experimentation.
Conversations At The Heart Of Make Good Festival
Some of the most anticipated moments at Make Good Festival will arrive not through large productions, but through conversation.
Social researcher Hugh Mackay will present On Being Human, reflecting on connection and contemporary life. Psychologist and author Ahona Guha will explore emotional relationships and vulnerability, while performer and writer Rachael Coopes leads a session titled The Art of Forgiveness.
Elsewhere, conversations around mortality, creativity, and environmental care thread through the program. A panel titled What Death Can Teach The Living brings together Dr Hannah Gould, Chanelle Collier, Amy Firth, and Zimmi Forest in a discussion likely to feel unusually candid for a public festival setting.
Poetry, too, remains central. Writers Claire G. Coleman and Jazz Money will appear in The Power of Poetry, examining language not simply as expression, but as a form of cultural memory and resistance.
These sessions suggest a festival more interested in reflection than certainty – a place where questions matter as much as answers.
Make Good Festival Balances Ideas With Making
Alongside its talks, Make Good Festival places strong emphasis on physical practice and making by hand.
Visitors will be able to participate in workshops ranging from woodcarving and native bee education to floral arranging, stitching, weaving, and movement sessions. Some events are already approaching capacity, particularly those involving tactile or collaborative work.
There is something quietly radical about this emphasis on manual creativity within contemporary festival culture. Participants will not simply observe expertise from a distance. They will carve, stitch, weave, dance, plant, and gather alongside artists and facilitators.
One workshop invites participants to weave coffins from natural fibres. Another explores attracting native bees into gardens and public spaces. Elsewhere, dance company Australian Dance Theatre will present both movement workshops and the world-premiere performance RISE at sunrise.
The rhythm of the festival appears intentionally varied. Large conversations give way to solitary making. Communal meals follow reflective performances. Open-air events shift according to weather and landscape.
That fluidity may be part of what distinguishes Make Good Festival from more conventional arts programming.
Make Good Festival And The Pull Beyond Sydney
For Sydney audiences, the journey to Bundanon forms part of the experience itself. Increasingly, regional arts gatherings across New South Wales are becoming spaces where city residents seek forms of cultural engagement less compressed by urban pace.
Bundanon occupies a particular position within that movement. Its architecture remains integrated into the surrounding environment rather than dominating it. Visitors move constantly between built spaces and open landscape. River, bushland, and sky remain present throughout the festival weekend.
Even the food programming reflects this connection to place. The Twilight Feast, created in partnership with Bundanon and Three Blue Ducks, will gather guests around long shared tables as evening settles across the property.
Meanwhile, the free Providore Marketplace on Sunday offers a more informal rhythm: local produce, conversation, and slow movement through the grounds.
By the festival’s close on Sunday afternoon, visitors will likely leave carrying less a singular headline moment than a collection of smaller impressions – smoke in cold morning air, conversations beside artworks, hands stained from making, distant music crossing the valley at dusk.
Event Details
Make Good Festival
30–31 May 2026
Location:
Bundanon
Festival Includes:
Talks, workshops, performances, cultural gatherings, food experiences and exhibitions across the Bundanon grounds.
Featured Guests Include:
Hugh Mackay, Ahona Guha, Jazz Money, Australian Dance Theatre and more.
Official Website & Tickets:
Bundanon – Make Good Festival