I’ve been to enough festivals to know the drill. You show up hyped, spend three days sleep-deprived and overstimulated, then drag yourself home needing a vacation from your vacation. So when I first heard about “restivals,” I was skeptical. A festival focused on rest? It sounded like an oxymoron designed by wellness influencers with too much time on their hands.
- Redefining Festivals: Restivals challenge traditional festival culture by prioritizing rest and well-being over constant activity and FOMO.
- Flexible Structure: Restivals offer flexible schedules and activities, allowing attendees to prioritize their individual needs and energy levels without pressure to participate in everything.
- Rest as Foundation: Restivals demonstrate the importance of rest as a foundation for productivity and connection, showing how prioritizing well-being can lead to measurable improvements in sleep and reduced anxiety.
I was wrong. Restivals aren’t just rebranding retreats with trendy names. They’re dismantling the toxic festival culture that equates fun with exhaustion. After attending my first one last spring, I get it now. Here’s why restivals might be the cultural reset we didn’t know we needed.
The Festival Problem Nobody Talks About
Let’s be honest about traditional festivals. They’re designed around scarcity and FOMO. Miss that headliner? Too bad. Need a bathroom break during your favorite set? Tough luck. Sleep? You can sleep when you’re dead. We’ve normalized festival culture as this beautiful chaos, but it’s actually just organized stress.
Caroline Jones figured this out in 2018 when she launched the first restival in London. She called it “a fun event combined with wisdom that is wifi free”. What started as one woman’s daydream on the London Underground has become a movement that’s quietly challenging how we think about gatherings, community, and what it means to have a good time. 1
Miss Jones & Co, the visionary team behind Restival, has redefined the wellness retreat landscape with its off-grid eco-luxe experiences set against breathtaking backdrops like the Sahara Desert, Arizona, and Oaxaca. Founded and produced by Caroline Jones, the brand handles everything from immersive programming to strategic partnerships with Soho House Group, Summit, Calm, and Pax. Restival’s innovative approach has earned accolades from The Times Style Magazine, Tatler, Conde Nast Traveller, and was named Harper’s Bazaar Retreat of the Year, reaching over five million people through targeted digital outreach. In the words of the Wall Street Journal, Restival is “Burning Man’s younger, cooler cousin.” 2
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What Actually Happens When Rest Becomes the Main Event
I’ll admit it. When I first saw the restival schedule, I panicked. Where was the lineup? The set times? The inevitable conflicts that would ruin my entire weekend? Instead, I found something radical: flexibility built into the bones of the event.
Morning movement sessions started at sunrise but nobody rushed you out of bed. Sound healing workshops happened in open fields where you could drift in and out. Meditation circles invited participation but never demanded it. The entire structure seemed designed around the revolutionary idea that you, the attendee, might actually know what you need.
At Mount Congreve Gardens in Ireland, they’ve perfected this balance. Spread across 70 acres of curated woodland, their May bank holiday retreat offers everything from forest bathing to silent brunches. But here’s the kicker: you can skip anything that doesn’t serve you. Try doing that at Coachella.
The Science Behind Why This Actually Works
Here’s where I expected to roll my eyes at wellness pseudoscience. Instead, I found legitimate research backing up what I experienced firsthand. Studies show restival attendees report 30% better sleep quality and reduced anxiety lasting two weeks post-event. That’s not placebo effect territory. That’s measurable change. 3
The secret isn’t in any single practice. It’s in the permission structure. When events prioritize rest over productivity, something shifts in how we relate to ourselves and others. Device-free zones force actual conversation. Flexible schedules let you honor your energy levels. Community circles create space for real connection instead of performative socializing.
Why Gen Z Gets It
During the pandemic, young people started hosting “at-home restivals,” streaming yoga and meditation sessions to massive audiences. While older generations dismissed it as laziness or lack of ambition, Gen Z was quietly pioneering a new relationship with leisure and community. 4
They understood something the rest of us are just catching up to: rest isn’t the opposite of productivity. It’s the foundation that makes everything else possible.
The Honest Reality Check
Not every restival gets it right. I’ve been to events that felt more like expensive nap camps than transformative experiences. The wellness industry loves to slap premium prices on basic human needs like sleep and nature access. Some restivals lean too heavily into luxury retreat vibes, pricing out the very people who need rest most.
But when done well, restivals offer something genuinely radical: permission to prioritize your wellbeing in a communal setting. They prove you can have shared experiences, live music, and community connection without destroying your nervous system in the process.
What This Means for Event Culture
Restivals aren’t just wellness trends. They represent a fundamental challenge to how we’ve organized social life around artificial scarcity and manufactured urgency. They’re asking: what if gatherings actually restored us instead of depleting us?
Traditional festivals will always have their place. But restivals are showing us alternatives. They’re proving that slowing down isn’t giving up, and that rest can be radical.
If you’ve heard of restivals, you probably already understand why they matter. If you haven’t, maybe it’s time to question why we’ve normalized exhaustion as the price of fun. I know where I’ll be this summer: somewhere with sunrise yoga, device-free zones, and the revolutionary idea that feeling good might actually be the point.
- https://suitcasemag.com/caroline-jones-founder-restival/ ↩︎
- https://www.mjandc.com/restival ↩︎
- https://ojs.aaai.org/index.php/AAAI/article/view/9975 ↩︎
- https://www.insighttrendsworld.com/post/insight-of-the-day-what-is-a-restival-gen-z-turn-to-stay-at-home-music-experiences ↩︎
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