Embracing Festival Culture in Landcare to Attract Young Adults
Greater Sydney Landcare's Wildventure program utilises "festival-like" concepts and event structures to engage young adults in Landcare.
Community Participation - LEP025_LLCYA_004
The issue
Greater Sydney Landcare has issues with engaging and retaining young people as volunteers at regular groups across the region, this is due to the traditional bushcare models being seen as stagnant by this demographic as well as young people not having enough time to commit to Landcare group expectations. Young people in this region are ever-moving, time-poor and living with costs of living pressures. Monthly commitments to the same place and activity are essentially not possible for most, instead they invest their time into more leisure activities such one-off weekend events or festivals that they can look forward to.
The solution
In March 2025, Wildventure hosted a free 3-day Nature Retreat for young adults on private land at Wheeny Creek, NSW as a way of tapping into a more festival-like experience with environmental and educational outcomes, serving as a large-scale yearly event to look forward to. The event included 2-nights of camping, all meals provided, and educational workshops such as sustainable fishing, riparian and erosion control planting, nature journalling, spotlighting, Bushcraft, yoga, intention setting and nature connection and ecological creek walks. Other fun activities such as a nature cinema, a photo booth, art stations and games were also included onsite.
The impact
35 young adult volunteers attended the retreat with the event selling out in less than a week of advertising. All attendees were incredibly excited about workshops and a highly connective experience to nature and their peers was achieved, most volunteers said they gained more knowledge through the workshops from enhancing their connection to nature to living more sustainably and understanding more about nature. Many have become repeat volunteers with interests in participating in Landcare further, and all attendees saying they would attend another campout like this again. Overall, it was a perfect example of how young people are willing to do Landcare when they can commit to less regular, larger-scale events that have multiple fun attractions and learning outcomes for them.
Learnings
The key learning is acknowledging that young adults prefer to spend their limited leisure time on fun, one-off events like festivals. The Wildventure Nature Retreat's success stems from a deliberate strategy to combine this reality with conservation. By building a "festival vibe" into the core of the event, featuring camping, diverse workshops, and social attractions alongside planting activities, Landcare was successfully reframed as a desirable weekend experience. This hybrid model proved that when environmental action adopts the appealing structure of a festival, it can effectively capture the enthusiasm and participation of this hard-to-reach demographic.
Key facts
- 35 young adult volunteers (18-35 years) attended from across the Greater Sydney Region for an immersive and nature-based 3-day, 2-night campout at Wheeny Creek, NSW.
- 300 native trees, shrubs and groundcovers were planted to combat erosion from flooding events and boost riparian habitat for the local platypus population.
- Implementing "festival-like" components, making it an infrequent event, and utilising multiple different workshops as fun and connective learning opportunities attracts young people as they are more likely to commit to a "one-off" event.