Shelby McAuliffe on Opening the Gates to Someone’s Dream

Details

• Interviewee: Shelby McAuliffe
• Role: Community admin Lead
• Community: Feÿtopia
• Location: chateau du fey
• Date: 2026-04-23
• Language: English

Summary

Shelby McAuliffe, based in Reno, Nevada, came to Feÿtopia in 2022 after meeting Ed through Covid-era online parties and hearing stories of the 2019 Thinking Garden. Five seasons in, she has spent two running admin: applications, bookings, onboarding interviews, the sponsor/voucher system. The interview covers three arcs. First, the identity shift: she arrived as a photographer, did a lightning talk on experience design because a friend perceived her that way, and has since rebranded as an immersive installation artist and experience designer. Second, the gatekeeper role: she describes it not as holding power over access but as opening the gates for someone who has been dreaming of this. Third, the challenge of admin burnout, the absence of a formal code of conduct, the new sponsor system, and the consent standard that governs when someone is asked not to return. She names the risk of Feytopia being known externally only for parties and argues for clearer values articulation and an honest conversation about what the community is for in a polycrisis world. Her three essentials are the château itself, the emergent quality, and the fact that it ends. She closes with a rich description of her small interventions (bedazzled egg, sock-stealing, grapefruit room with mouth openers, art car on the last night) and the grandchildren framing: Feytopia is a place of deep generosity and wonder.

Key quotes

I recognize that the role that I play is giving access to someone’s dream.

It’s not about being the gatekeeper that’s exciting. It’s about opening the gates for someone.

We don’t really have a code of conduct of how someone should behave.

If we don’t define what we are, people will define it for us. And it’s happening.

I’ve heard that they have great parties. If that becomes the narrative, it won’t get us where we need to go.

Being uncomfortable means learning something.

The fun element is why we come here. In the heart of all this stress, we need beacons of hope.

Feytopia is a place of deep generosity and wonder.

Transcript

Sharon: We can start with your name, and where are we sitting right now?

Shelby: My name is Shelby McAuliffe, and I'm sitting in my room at Château de Fey during Feytopia in 2026.

Sharon: How did you first hear about this place?

Shelby: I first heard about the Château de Fey, not quite Feytopia yet. I heard of Thinking Garden. I had met Ed through online parties during Covid, through a mutual friend of ours. That connection led me to hearing about Thinking Garden and Feytopia. The mutual friend during Covid who had connected me to Ed had gone to Thinking Garden in 2019. So I had heard about this château in France, and the meadows, and this delightful event where everyone was silent in the mornings. A collection of thinkers, makers, entrepreneurs, doers, and intellectuals that Ed had curated.

Fast forward a few months, I meet Ed, online parties. Another couple months later, Feytopia was born out of the lockdown. And so the château came up again in my spirit. I met more of the Feytopians in Mexico, for Ed's birthday, which was the end of 2021, and went to Feytopia for the first time in 2022.

Sharon: What are the values that led you to come?

Shelby: My personal values. I enjoy novel experiences. I find that what draws me to festivals, and why I continue to go to festivals, and what I relate to when I describe or talk about the community here, I relate it to a festival container, where it allows people to connect, interact, and engage in a hyper-localized, temporal container. When you're at an event, at a festival, you're there for a small amount of time. There's a specific creative container that's been set and made. You get to wake up in the morning and meet a new person every day.

When I found Feytopia, I really felt like this was a living festival. It still has a temporality component that I find really rich to the makeup and container of Feytopia.

Play, becoming childlike, play bringing out the raw component of processing and beauty that comes through laughter and silliness. That is a big part of what I bring out into the world. And I love meeting new people. I value collaboration and collaborative thinking and collaborative making. A lot of my personal art practice is collaborative in nature already. So meeting this community and diving into this bizarre, weird, eccentric, hyper-intelligent, very avant-garde, creative, collaborative community just tapped into so much of what my art practice had been.

Sharon: How did it feel to make the first few steps into this place?

Shelby: I was so mystified. There's so much magic just showing up, driving up the driveway, watching this castle appear out of the woods. The first time I came, I was lost. I showed up, I got picked up by people I didn't know. They just answered in the chat and said, I'm on my way. Great, I'll meet you there. And then just being transported here. So every single time I come here, I try and tap back into that novelty of showing up and having the castle just appear. There's something so magical about driving up the driveway, especially at night when everything's lit up.

Coming back and thinking of the first time I was here, I was intrigued by all the different spaces, all the different rooms, how each of them held a different energy of what could happen in them. I was very observant. I came with a friend and we observed a lot. We kind of did our own thing. We poked around and walked around the whole grounds, checked out the cave, went to the gym, by ourselves. We really did a solo tour.

Sharon: How did your artistic practice develop here?

Shelby: I feel like I've had a bell curve for my art practice and project making, building inspiration while being here.

When I first came for a month, in January after Fey Arts, I felt very strongly that I had shown that I was an artist who brought these pieces, but during Feytopia, I didn't bring anything. I had a lot of time and a lot of dedication to creating something new while I was here. What emerged was more of a rebrand of myself. I decided I would do a lightning talk. I'd never done a lightning talk before. I asked my friend Spencer, what do you want me to talk about? He said, experience design. Okay, wow, this is interesting. I've never considered myself an experience designer. This is how you perceive me. I'm going to roll with that.

Since then that has spiked my identity and momentum towards being an experience designer, and identifying as that as part of my career path. I rebranded as an immersive installation artist and experience designer. I before had been a photographer, and in my art practice had just been photography. I found that even when I was here, I would bring my camera and I would never use it. So I started recognizing that, redid my website, and didn't have a name for it yet. But I knew I needed to pivot. And that all came out of that first month that I was here. So it was huge.

Sharon: I'm curious. So from coming here and having a good time, you live in Nevada. Why take so much commitment here and be such an integral part of the team?

Shelby: It's a great question. There's so many things that prompted me to do this. When I came here, and I think I've been saying it since the first time I came here, I could feel and sense and tell everyone that I was meaning the potentiality of who I could meet. It's not that I knew that I had met someone that was going to change my life, but I knew that the possibility of being a part of this community would propel me in the direction that I was meant to go.

I had also been saying, my next job, my next career direction, it's going to come from Feytopia. There's something about Feytopia and the people I'm meeting here that is going to relate to the next iteration of my career and propel me in a new direction. I was working producing events in crypto when I first came to Feytopia, and got this job working at a crypto company doing events. I was laid off about six months ago, in October. I had immediately already fallen into working with Lou and Alex. That had already started. They had already reached out to me.

Sharon: How does it make you feel that you have this role in the community?

Shelby: I recognize that the role I play is giving access to someone's dream. Being able to come here was my childhood dream. So being on the admin side, being someone who's supporting admittance and reviewing applications, guiding people through the process, I recognize that is a position of power, but in a way that, I am able to recognize and offer that dream to people that I was given as well. So I feel very honored, and delighted that I get to play that part. It's not about being the gatekeeper that's exciting. It's about opening the gates for someone.

Sharon: Can you say a little bit about the process of onboarding and selection?

Shelby: Yeah, there are a few things that I would like us to move towards that we haven't yet. We're seven seasons in, and we don't really have a code of conduct of how someone should behave, what are the limits of what is acceptable or not acceptable within the community grounds.

The process for me has been, review the application. Do they know someone? If they know someone, I verify with that person. This is a new thing we're doing this year: you have to have a sponsor, building in a sponsor system so that people who come from another community, or who have a recommendation, we know who to go to to say, this person is not acting appropriately, you need to have a conversation with them. It releases some of the burden on the emotional cottages, or on myself or admin people, that feel like we have to be the ones to steward everything. Decentralize it a bit.

There have been some people that had conflicts during the season that we requested to not return. It took quite a few people to discuss, go over. It wasn't a one-person decision. Consent is a big part of our culture here. When you approach someone and talk to them about it, what is their response? There were a few people that didn't really show remorse, or felt that they had done anything wrong, and weren't really receptive to collaboratively resolving the issue. In that case, we've requested they don't return.

Sharon: What are the three main things, that if you removed them, this space would not be Feytopia?

Shelby: The château itself. The grounds. The infrastructure and container of the château. A lot of what this is today is because of what has been built before, on the building level and architecture level.

If you removed the emergent qualities and serendipity. The element of allowing things to play out, and the emergent quality. Things being too rigid and structured and planned, like that would dissolve the essence of the community.

The third thing, that I think is quintessential, is that it ends. That's why festivals are what they are. I do think that one of the main elements that keeps this community what it is, and not fall apart, and is around for seven seasons, is that it is seasonal. It has a beginning. It ends. And no one lives here full time, besides Jess.

Sharon: What do you think are the things that, if they would change or be added, would make this place live even more to its potential?

Shelby: One thing that is not just a request, it was brought up earlier about reputation. And if we don't define what we are, people will define it for us. And it's happening. Someone was saying they met someone external to the community in a random place. They had heard about Feytopia. I've heard that they have great parties. If that becomes the narrative that other people think about it, you can't escape the reputation. Burning Man's been going on for 30 years, and still many people just think it's a nudist party in the desert. It's so much more than that.

At the same token, if we were to change how external people perceive Feytopia, I think that would propel the people to come here, that would elevate it in the direction of being a bridge, and building the future, and the projects and the infrastructure, and getting the financing, and all these things that Feytopia needs to keep living.

Another thing that I think would help would be creating a values list and a code on that, and having a little bit more structure around what it is we're doing, and being bold to say what we're doing, still maintaining a strong North direction, without really knowing the final destination.

Another thing that could change is already happening: we're watching the change of how Feytopia shifts with a more family-focused community. Community members have babies. Very soon these children are going to be talking and being a part of the community. What does that look like?

Sharon: What's the place of places like this in a polycrisis world?

Shelby: Being uncomfortable means learning something.

The fun element is why we come here. The fun, the play, is in the heart of all this stress. In the heart of all of this pain, we have to find a reason to fight. I think there has to be parts of our lives that give us purpose and reason to fight for ourselves and for others. When things start crumbling and crashing, we have somewhere to turn to. We have some beacon of hope.

In my personal life, I'm building community in Reno, and I'm working a lot on hyper-localism, talking about permaculture, sustainability, how to live more sustainably in the desert. I run an event called Banana Rodeo in Reno. This is my partner's vision where he's building up. He was deeply inspired by coming here. He came here once for four days, and got to see what it looked like to live in community, with many people that had a similar ethos.

The elements of what's coming up here at Feytopia, even though the parties exist and we're having fun in the heat of disaster and public despair, it's giving a lens into the possibilities, a lens into a potential.

Guest: How would you tell your grandchildren of Feytopia?

Shelby: How would I tell my grandchildren? I would tell my grandchildren, if you're watching this, that Feytopia is a place of deep generosity, and wonder. It is a place where people come together to explore realms of possibility, to play in ways that they wouldn't otherwise. To explore the possibilities of other people, of what could happen if, and allow so much to emerge, without planning.

Some of my most favourite experiences here have been unplanned. Have been what came up, because we just decided in that moment that energetically, this is what we want to do.

I don't know what the world's going to look like in 40 years. I just really hope that in that time, people still have access to talk to other people openly, and consider ideas that would feel silly in a regular societal context, and actually go down the rabbit hole, playing out what would happen if you stole your friend's sock.

Guest: Can you please provide some recaps of some of the schemes you've been up to in the last few weeks?

Shelby: Some of the things I started doing this year was the bedazzling, and I created a bedazzled egg. We had a theme. One week the theme was egg, and I said the theme was egg. I did not have any vision. I had no idea what would happen with it. This bedazzled egg became a centrepiece, at different art shows and parties.

My friends stole my sock, took it on an adventure. I didn't know when I was going to get my sock back or how the sock was going to return to me. Then I stole their sock, and started framing my friends, put the sock in their pockets.

I created a grapefruit experience, many grapefruit experiences. The pamplemousse is the spirit of Feytopia. This year we really leaned hard into the theme of happiness. I created a room. I bring these mouth openers, which have become very quintessential to Feytopia. I created a room with my friends to essentially have people eat pamplemousse with these mouth openers. You're drooling, and people are, it's a very abject experience. But I was caring for them. I would suck up all their drool and we would collect their juice. We had this whole bit of serving the juice that the Feytopians made. It ended up being the most hilarious thing.

We made an art car this last night, which has been talked about for the last four years, and that finally happened. We put a car, we put some mattresses in the back of the car, we put some lights up top and some mattresses up top, and then loaded it full of people, and drove three miles an hour into the Woodstock party, loaded up, drove three miles an hour back towards the château, stopped, parked. Just so that our kids understand: play.

Sharon: Thank you.

Shelby: Thank you.