Sinopale: Reading a Festival Through Care

Reading the Sinopale Account 

The Sinopale account is not presented as a model of a caring festival or as an example of best practice. Its experience is used as material for inquiry. Looking across its history makes it possible to ask what was understood at the time and what was not seen, which relationships developed or became strained, where responsibility and power were located, what different people contributed and carried, what became possible, what was depleted and what remains unresolved. 

The account is written in the first person because it presents one person’s testimony and retrospective reflection. Notice how the author distinguishes intentions from what happened, revisits events from different perspectives and leaves some questions unresolved. 

Where the experience suggests a broader learning, a Care Insight draws attention to it. Care Insights are brief observations to consider alongside your own experience. They may support, complicate or question the propositions of Part I. They are not universal prescriptions, and the case is not offered as proof of the theory. 

Introducing Sinopale 

I write this case as one of Sinopale’s founders, drawing on my involvement, memories and retrospective interpretation through the Reader’s conceptual lens. My responsibilities, professional background and priorities shape what I notice. Other founders, team members, volunteers, curators, collaborators, artists, partners and local participants may remember the same events differently, attach different significance to them or question my interpretations. Their perspectives may reveal contributions and costs I cannot see from my position. I use “we” for shared activities without claiming shared judgements, and keep my account open to dialogue, correction and further development. 

In writing this account, I also make choices about whose work becomes visible. Those choices are part of the care questions I am examining. I name people where this acknowledges a specific contribution, such as an artwork, a project or an initiative. Where I reflect on tensions, decisions and difficult periods, I refer to people by their roles rather than their names, so that attention remains on dynamics and conditions rather than on individuals. The people mentioned here do not constitute a complete account of those who made Sinopale possible, and frequency of mention is not a measure of contribution. When I reflect on tensions or decisions, I distinguish what I observed from how I interpreted it. I cannot speak for another person’s intentions or experience. My colleagues, and others involved, such as curators, artists and partners, may understand these situations differently. 

I begin by introducing how we work in Sinopale and how our relationships and responsibilities developed. I then reflect through the same twelve territories, in the same order, as the reflective framework that follows. When I return to an event, I ask a different question about it. 

I cannot yet answer every territory equally. I keep the full framework visible while allowing my account to remain incomplete.