About Essence
History
Essence Festival has been a vision that has been carried for many years by Mark Cutliffe but also echoed in the hearts of many of others.
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Following many different experiences and prompts from God the decision was made to do something with the concept of the festival and the vision of encouraging creativity and arts amongst God's people. In 2015 we began with an evening for creatives to meet, network, pray and share their creativity together.
2017 saw our first weekend gathering to test the idea of the festival and the venue we would use. In 2018 attendance grew and continued to grow in 2019.
We hope and pray that Essence is simply used by God to bless, encourage and help Gods people walk in all that God has for them for many years to come.
What is the festival about?
Communication of a vision is so important and it has taken us sometime to bring all that God has said down to a few points of reference.
These points are the real heart of the festival and any offshoots from the main event.
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The three points are;
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· To call together the artisans and creatives
· To call out the creativity in God’s people
· To encourage and empower people to take creativity back into their homes, churches, communities and the market place.
These points are explained in more detail below.
Call together the creatives
Calling together the creatives is an important part of what Essence Festival is all about. Something special happens when like-minded people gather together. Stories are told, ideas shared and connections made, but that's not all.
When we come together we have the opportunity to encourage and support each other and bringing our gifting together creating a creative, expression filled environment of worship.
Drawing out the creativity amongst Gods people
Calling out the creativity is something of both a prophetic and practical act. Its all about encouraging people to have a go and stretch out creatively expressing something that has inspired, or even just having a go for fun.
So many people have gifting that they don't realise or are paralysed by fear and negative comparison. Essence fest is designed to encourage the seasoned creative as well as those who don't think they have any creativity, skill or gifting.
Empower and Encourage
We intentionally aim to encourage and empower people to both explore and develop in their gifting or even make a start with something creative.
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We also aim to provide learning and opportunities for growth so that people can take something home with them back into their own homes, churches and communities or workplace using creativity to communicate and share something of our amazing creator in new and exciting ways.
And there's a little bit more....
So much happens from a place of community, relationships and networking. We are looking to develop a network of creatives and provide ongoing gatherings, learning opportunities and more, so please take a look at the Gatherings page to find out about meet ups that take place throughout the year!
Even more...
At Essence you will find that many of the people who are speaking or running workshops are actively involved in using their creativity in their communities and to connect and reach out to others. please get in touch if you would like to connect with people in an area of creativity similar to yourself.
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