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Splore has become a cultural landmark on the festival calendar - encompassing a spectrum of the creative community in a weekend of festivities.

As it continues to grow and moves to an annual event this year, director John Minty tells Barney Chunn how the creative intention and focus on community is still at the heart of the festival.

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Though they may not always seem it, a festival can be a fickle beast. Like miniature empires, some seem invincible, rising to massive, conquering heights, only to crumble under the weight of their own size and speed of their own growth.

If the festivals like Big Day Out (not to name names) are the British Empire, then Splore is achieving what even Napoleon couldn’t. Splore has conquered Russia.

Not really, but it is the longest running locally started and operated festival in NZ, showing a longevity that even empires would envy.

John Minty, Splore’s festival director, was part of the festival’s inception back in 1998. Described on its website as a ‘platform to educate and inspire our Splore community through the festival kaupapa (ethos, values and beliefs) of contributing to the well-being of our planet by creating transformational experiences’ – the festival has always set out to be more than a three day concert.

Minty is a big man, with a big man’s assuredness. He talks about the festival, and particularly the ‘Splore community,’ with the warm intonations of a proud father.

“I’m happy to keep Splore the way it is,” he succinctly puts it, when I mentioned the potential to grow the festival given its successes have been continuous for the past 16 years. “I’ve got no desire to do Splore spin offs or going to Australia or anything like that. When you take [a financial] motivation away, you can actually be a bit more pure, and create something quite special.”

Splore is intentionally not just a music festival. It’s a representation and actualisation of a belief in a way of existence. If that seems a bit grandiose, it may just be, but then again, maybe it isn’t. Splore explicitly intends to be ‘equal parts liberation and libation; idealism and interactivity; creative showcase and community springboard.’ And for many long-time attendees, it achieves that goal.

2015 is the first year the festival will become an annual event. A renewed resource consent which allows the event to run yearly has meant a significant shift in organisation of the event, though it’s something Minty thinks will make things more enjoyable and efficient.

“Every two years was actually quite difficult,” he says. “Because you built up a really good team, and volunteers and you do a really cool festival and everyone’s buzzing and then you have to go ‘Oh, got to go do something else now, because two years is a long way away.’”

As the music director for the festival, Minty has the enviable job of curating the acts, which requires watching a lot of live music, and travelling a lot to see it. Despite sounding like (and in all effect, being) a life-long party, it’s something Minty takes pride in, and takes his time with.

In fact, it took six years to get Erykah Badu to the festival, in 2012, a booking that took tenacity but one that has since etched itself into Splore folklore. “And she loved it there,” he enthused. “It can be hard to deal with managers and the infrastructure around the acts but when they get there they go, ‘Oh I get it, this is amazing.’”

With a festival the size of Splore, which sells 7000 to 8000 tickets, there are bigger players in the market. It’s something Minty is conscious of with Splore and the effects it can have.

“The problem is the Australian promoters bringing in the big acts, and we have no control over that.” Last year, Eminem and the Rapture tour was announced four months after Splore, and on the same weekend. “Well that’s 55,000 tickets – that’s $40 million out of the market, just like that.”

Which is where the creative community of the festival – the Splore community that ‘is as much a part of the show as the performers are key to the scene’ (according to the Splore website) is arguably what has sustained the festival through ‘good and bad years financially.’

“There is a lot more going on than just a party. We’re very aware of the special nature of that particular park and have local iwi who are heavily involved. There’s a big environmental thing; there’s a cultural thing, it’s quite a well-rounded experience.”

The theme to this year’s festival is ‘home,’ which encompasses the ideology of the festival succinctly. It ideals around respect for the environment and one’s place within it; the creative intention and the focus that the festival has on its community. Home can be many things: hearts, hats, and houses – but it’s always where you feel welcomed and wanted.

Minty seems relaxed about the upcoming festival. He’s excited to finish the timetabling for the acts but most of all, for February 20 to arrive. As he puts it, he is one of his audience – he’s a part of the Splore community and he’s looking forward to bringing it, and being, home.

• Splore 2015 February 20 - 22 at Tapapakunga Regional Park