The O Positive Festival, held in Kingston, New York, in early October every year, presents a weekend full of music, art and wellness activities across all genres and disciplines, for all age groups, indoors and outdoors, and all for the price of a donation. But it's behind the scenes that O Positive has the biggest impact. The festival confronts the lack of affordable and free health care amongst the USA's artistic community by exchanging 'The Art of Medicine' for 'The Medicine of Art' by which "underinsured artists and musicians create and perform in exchange for a variety of services donated by doctors, dentists and complementary care providers."

For this Episode of One Step Beyond, Tony Fletcher speaks with Art Director Lindsay Wolkowicz and Music Director Lara Hope about the specific health problems working artists face going about their manual labour, and how O Positive seeks to make a lasting change in the landscape of USA health care - or rather, the lack of it. Tony also takes his tape recorder around the various concerts, wellness activities, and interactive art displays, which range from tours of the Festival's celebrated Murals program, to a Mindfulness walk, an interactive book-gifting art display, and music by such varied acts as Mercury Rev, Roxiny, Sonny Singh, Amanda Palmer and the Mac & Cheeze Balkan Power Trio.

More information about the O Positive festival can be found at

https://opositivefestival.org

The O Positive 2022 Festival Music Preview playlist can be found at

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3qNZ6CRBHwACM3T7tYw3JM

The IlluminatiO+n immersive art, music and wellness audio tour is available at:

https://opositivefestival.org/illumination/

Rebecca Kelly G is at https://www.rebeccakellyg.com/

Three of this year's commissioned murals depicted below, depending on your streaming platform:

Questions/comments/suggestions? Email [email protected].

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Theme song is 'Yes Men' by The Dear Boys. Listen in full here.

Logo by Mark Lerner. Logo photo taken at Arte Sumepaz in Cundinimarca, Colombia.

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