Hardcore Community at Furnace Fest: Nostalgia, Belongingness, and Vulnerability

Punk Scholars Network conference presentation (2025). In this paper I reflect on the meaningfulness of the Furnace Fest community to individual participants. My findings are based on four sequential years of fieldwork at Furnace Fest (2021–24) with ever-growing research teams, hundreds of survey responses, and dozens of hours of semi-structured interviews with organizers, community members, and random attendees (around 50 conducted at the 2024 event alone). I argue that nostalgia at Furnace Fest is generative as much as it is reflective, affirming participants’ identities while also empowering them to take risks and be vulnerably transparent in relative safety.