It's Saturday evening.

You're not sure if it's the cold winter evening or the large cue of alien monarchs, diplomats, space engineers and forest creatures that sends a shiver down your spine.
A tall man in a glowing mushroom hat addresses you and your group, reading from a large scroll.

"Welcome to Mary Hush..."

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Saturday, July 23 kicked off two festivals at once - Mary Hush, an underground immersive art and music festival in New Zealand, and Return to Green, a global regenerative forestry event.
They were interlinked and, of course, Unchained Music (UM) was involved with both.

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What is Mary Hush?

Imagine an alternate universe of immersive art, real world / metaverse crossover, melodic house music, regenerative forestry and NFT treasure hunts across 20+ zones, populated by ~450 people, where good intentions rule, and where surprise is a key value. This is a hint of what a Mary Hush event is like.

Among the many hidden zones of the labyrinthian event, a large live stage was set where Unchained Music artist Beacon Bloom played a surprise live set to a highly energised crowd.

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If one was to explore deeper into The Hush, one may have found an underground Metaverse space, where sets from the mainstage were livestreaming into Voxel parcels. Here enters Return to Green.

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Return to Green

One of the first metaverse events for the Regenerative Finance Movement, RTG is headed by the enigmatic T-Rex, who, alongside help local crypto-community Tyan Haus, managed to pull off 2 livestream feeds from Mary Hush stages, into the RTG metaverse spaces, while raising funds and awareness for environmental projects on blockchain charity platform Giveth. Big supporters of ReFi (Regenerative Finance), it was a no brainer for Unchained Music and our community to lend support to Return to Green.

This involved us running a ReFi special twitter space, assistance with the front facing website of RTG, as well as UM artists (N5316n, St Ill, Yoshiro, IMT, Beacon Bloom, Aquariux) donating NFTs for auction and performing in the Metaverse of Return To Green on it's final day of connective talks and charity auctions.

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Impact

Return to Green raised $8912 (USD) for environmental groups on giveth - a huge achievement. Alongside that, at least 1000 trees will be planted from Mary Hush with ReFi project Grandmother Grove. Imagine 1000 trees in your mind - that is a forest frens.

These are huge achievements for these initial efforts, but there is still a long way to go. Here at Unchained Music we look forward to supporting future ReFi fundraisers, metaverse and real-life festivals and are stoked to be sitting on the edge of art, culture, technology and regeneration.

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