Telluride Mushroom Festival: 2020 Theme for #40 +

14 Feb Telluride Mushroom Festival: 2020 Theme for #40 +

The following is an update on the 40th annual Telluride Mushroom, August –  Festival written by festival director Britt Bunyard, PhD. Learn about volunteering here. Tickets here, including the brand new Stakeholders Pass, for those who care deeply about fungal ecology, the ever growing network of mycologists and wish to be a part of our sustainable future.

Everyone, I am REALLY stoked for this year’s Festival! The 40th!

And it’s going to be a great lineup…some big names making their first trip to the Fest. And since we’re celebrating a big anniversary, you know we have to invite back some of the most popular faculty from the past several years just to make it extra special.

I’m super thrilled to be able to finally announce that Erika Dyck will be one of our Keynote presenters for the 40th.

Here is a little info on Professor Dyck, who teaches at the University of Saskatchewan, and also holds the special title of Canada Research Chair in the History of Medicine.

Dr. Dyck’s chief interests are in the history of psychiatry, mental health, deinstitutionalization, and eugenics. She is the author of “Psychedelic Psychiatry,” which examines the history of LSD experimentation and how it fits within broader trends in the changing orientation of psychiatry during the post-World War II period. Her second book, “Facing Eugenics,” examines the experiences of patients and families as they confronted eugenics in 20th-century Alberta. It traces their experiences through coercive and voluntary sexual sterilization procedures and the legacy of eugenics for influencing our perceptions of reproductive rights, disability, and reproductive choice.

A long list of publications by Dr. Dyck is here. 

Tradd Cotter will be back to once again rock our world as a Keynote presenter and managing the pre-Fest workshops. Tradd has incredible news on progress of a new facility he’s creating in Haiti…and so much more.

Andy MacKinnon, “Canada’s Rock Star of Botany,” will be making his first visit to the Festival and will thrill our audience as a Keynote presenter. Andy is a forest ecologist and mycologist who works for the Canadian government in BC. He is the author of what may be the most popular botany book ever for Canada, “Plants of the Pacific Northwest Coast.” He is currently working on another huge guide, “Mushrooms of British Columbia.”

To help us celebrate our big anniversary year, we have many Festival favorites back with their latest research and new stories to tell.

Here are a few teasers:

Larry Millman will discuss the latest findings on cold weather adaptations of fungi in the North and the effect of climate change on fungi of high elevations.

Robert Rogers will be returning from Edmonton, AB, to discuss medicinal mushrooms of the Rocky Mountains.

Brigitte Mars will make her first appearance at the Festival to educate about psychedelics.

Danielle Stevenson and William Padilla Brown will be returning to lead workshops on cultivation, medicinals…and a few surprises.

Chad Hyatt will be back by popular demand, and wowing audiences with demonstrations on how to turn wild Rocky Mountain mushrooms into haute cuisine.

Alex Dorr will be back to teach about medicinal mushrooms and better health, as will our long-time friend John Michelotti, who will invoke the spirit of Gary Lincoff and present “Fungal Devotion: How to quit your job & make ends meet with mycelium plus forays.”

Plus our regular faculty from the Rocky Mountain region including Art Goodtimes, Kris Holstrom, Katrina Blair, Larry Evans, Graham Steinruck, Lauren Czaplicki d’Antonio, Greg Sanchez, Ken Kessenbrock, and many others will educate about wild mushrooms, lead forays, and demonstrate how mushrooms can save the planet.

The Telluride Mushroom Festival is the largest (and wildest) wild mushroom festival in North America. For 40 years the Festival has been changing minds about wild mushrooms. I remember back when few academic mycologists would have had any interest in coming to the Festival. “Mainstream” mycophiles attended NAMA-sanctioned forays, but raised eyebrows at the mere mention of “Telluride.”

That has completely changed.

For 40 years, we have been changing minds…one mushroom, and one mycophile, at a time. Today the Festival annually attracts the biggest names in research–studying cutting-edge molecular genetics and taxonomy, mycomedicinals, and mycoremediation, forest health, and ecology, and clinicians restarting studies using psychedelics–from the USA, Canada, and beyond.

The past two years in a row have seen record attendance, as the public’s interest in what mushrooms can do for the planet continues to grow.

And so that brings me to this year’s Festival Theme – “Changing Minds, One Mushroom at a Time”.

I am ready to begin a fifth decade of changing minds. I am so ready!