• Event: Lumut Creative Festival (Pesta Karya Lumut)
• Dates: 7-9 February 2025
• Venue: Laman Karya Lumut
• Address: Jalan Titi Panjang, Lumut, Manjung, Perak, West Malaysia
• Nearest stations: Lumut Bus Station; Lumut Jetty

Art and culture are the environment

We waited one year to attend the sixth Lumut Creative Festival. There was none last year during the Visit Perak Year 2024. The event is the brainchild of Laman Karya Lumut (LAKAR), a creative art space based at the seaside town of Lumut, Perak. The town is in the district of Manjung. It’s four hour’s drive from the Malaysia-Thailand border, and under two hours from Penang.

“Lakar” means to scribble in Malay. It’s affiliated with KUASA (The Association of Environmental Activists). “Kuasa” means power in Malay. The association is managed by staff and members whose expertise is in sustainability and the environment. LAKAR hosts several cafes, a music studio, a workshop space, a paddle boarding club and a backpacker hostel. The paddle boarding club organises paddling-and-plogging (beach-cleaning) sessions to raise awareness on the ocean environment.

It’s situated two minutes away from the Lumut Jetty, and five minutes away from the Lumut Bus Station. The art space is the perfect hub for grassroot arts and visiting creatives.

Zuwairi Nawawi, one of the event organisers, told us that LAKAR is the creative extension of the environmental projects carried out by the association. It’s the cultural embodiment of KUASA’s sustainability ethos. People and culture aren’t separate from the environment.

• More on LAKAR’s history and its founder
• Facebook group: www.facebook.com/LakarLumut
• More on KUASA: www.kuasaperak.org

The curation: sound and vision

The festival was divided into three streams: creative workshops, musical performance and poetry recitation. 2025 saw poetry introduced for the first time. Story Of Books took part in the zine-making workshop organised by Projek Rebel, a collective of poets. We made zines out of old magazines. We had a chat with the teachers – Syafinaz, Afifah Gentayang and Faiz – about David Carson, the American graphic designer who pioneered deconstructionism and gave grunge its visual identity in the 1990s.

Bricolage art and grunge sit well with Lumut. It’s a blue-collar district. The main income comes from shipping, fishing, manufacturing, shipbuilding, tourism and hospitality. Workmen overalls, hi-viz jackets and cargo pants are a common sight. So are beat-up cars and delivery mopeds. Locals drive to jetties to buy fish from the fishermen. What they lack in spending power, they compensate for in home improvements, gardening and eating out. Picnic by the beach is the norm. Weekend fishing is a birthright.

There are also three universities and several polytechnics in this district. There’s a captive audience of educated young people. In this quiet district, an arts festival is something to look forward to.

Music for the people

The gigs happened on the first and second day. Acts such as Fugo, Margasatwa, Armpunk Syndicate, Maddame, Clever Moose, Arish Mikael, Odd Week, Fieldville, Dogtooth, Ilmunanti and Faye Faire travelled up to Lumut to perform at the festival.

Key programmes were broken up by DJ and acoustic sets, courtesy of Pigworker, ISS, Bobby Aman, Acun and Aydrus, which took place intermittently throughout the festival.

The first night’s rock performances took place at the main stage. Young men – and dads with kids on their shoulders – pogoed to the sound of Armpunk Syndicate. The band ended their set with the message: “Budaya kita korap. Ingat!” (Our culture is corrupt, remember that). More pogoing followed.

The following night, the show moved to an open-air space in the car park. Margasatwa, the second night act, ignited the atmosphere with their rock numbers. The area was packed. It rained. No one left. Then the DJs took over. The kids gathered around closely, nodding their heads to the beat. Families milled around. Little children rode their bikes up and down the promenade. It was fun to be had by all.

The poets saved the day

Poetry recitation took place on the second day. It was a production of Projek Rebel, featuring poets Svar Naquib, Karmaa, Afifah Gentayang, Aliff Awan and Wan Syafiqah. It was lovely listening to poetry by the seaside. To the right of us, the poets questioned the meaning of life, societal pressure and social injustice. To the left, beyond the promenade, the boats and ships chugged along quietly. It was quite a view. It’d be great to hold a poetry festival here. Perhaps a poetry festival accompanied by classical music performances, like the UK Proms in the Park.

Aliff Awan, whom we previously covered at KALAM Kreatif KL 2024, did his skit with the sarong again. It was good to see it performed in a different setting, eliciting different reactions from the audience. Post performance, Wan Syafiqah gave us two pieces of poems in little envelopes, a wonderful gesture. We hope she gets her manuscript published one day. Her works are thought-provoking.

• More on Projek Rebel: www.instagram.com/projekrebel

Sartorial direction: “Perak-on-the-sea”

Our creative director was absolutely stoked to document the vibrant scene of Pesta Karya Lumut. In the UK, she documented international dance and performing artists at the Royal Opera House London, Dominion Theatre, The Cecil Sharp House and Sadler’s Wells Theatre (to name a few). So the opportunity to train her lens on the artistic scene of her own seaside hometown was golden.

Her reportage on the sixth Lumut Creative Festival also focuses on the community’s fashion lifestyle, artistic subculture and seaside sartorial that shape the unique design direction of the Pacific Southeast Asia.

• More on her work at zarinaholmes.com

More on LAKAR

LAKAR is an acronym for Laman Karya, a brainchild of Najmi Jamaluddin, a former engineer who proposed the creation and establishment of the association as a space for youngsters from various backgrounds to showcase their talent.

Najmi and Zuwairi are both members of KUASA, using their knowledge from their engineering background, passion for music and environmental awareness for its initiatives.

The festival, Pesta Karya Lumut, educates the public on waste management by providing recyclable bins, an attempt to prevent waste generated at the festival from going to the district’s landfill.

More on Malaysian literary festivals on Story Of Books

• George Town Literary Festival 2024
• KALAM Kreatif KL 2024
• KL International Book Fair 2024
• KL Alternative Bookfest 2024

Story Of Books at Hammersmith and Fulham Artsfest 2019

• “River to river, coast to coast”: Story Of Books at HF Artsfest 2019
• HF ArtsFest Event: “River to river, coast to coast”, 8 June 2019″

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