Brighton Wellness Festival founder on democratizing personal care
Key takeaways
- The Brighton Wellness Festival announces the BWF summit to unite the wellness community and challenge its current narrative.
- The event’s founder aims to redefine wellness as a beneficial community asset rather than a premium lifestyle choice.
- An age of disconnection and hyper-individualism leads the shift toward holistic practices and heritage rituals.
Brighton Wellness Festival (BWF), the UK’s new wellness platform for inclusive well-being, has announced a flagship program: The BWF Summit, set to take place on October 4, 2025. The launch comes as wellness continues to shape the personal care industry and consumers prioritize holistic health practices.
The event aims to unite wellness professionals in holistic practice and sustainable living, and industry pioneers to explore the category’s future. The summit seeks to democratize wellness for all rather than selling it as a commodity.
Personal Care Insights speaks to the event’s founder, Natasha Jackson, to gain deeper insight into the upcoming summit and how the future of wellness is shifting beyond individual self-care and performative practices to prioritize collective, systemic change and emotional well-being.
“While the wider festival program is a celebration of holistic health, the BWF Summit is about exploring what it really means to be well in 2025,” says Jackson.
“We’re bringing together voices from all backgrounds and modalities to reclaim and redefine the capitalist wellness narrative.”
The summit will provide attendees with a full-day experience, including panel discussions and 12 workshops, practices, and provocations on mental, physical, spiritual, and emotional health.
She hopes the event will position Brighton as a “home of collective and inclusive wellness” while redefining the wellness category as an accessible practice rather than a premium lifestyle choice.
“Locally, I want to do what Brighton Festival and Brighton Fringe have done for the arts, but for wellness. Globally, I want to drive forward a movement where wellness isn’t just for the privileged few but for everyone,” she says.
What inspired the creation of BWF, and what gap does it aim to fill in the wellness landscape?
Natasha: Wellness has lost its way. It’s hyper-individualized, over-commercialized, and often only available to the privileged.
The BWF summit aims to spotlight wellness beyond “self-care” by championing community and holistic well-being. Childhood trauma and subsequent C-PSTD (complex post-traumatic stress disorder) shaped my view of wellness, and the need for holistic treatment, mind, body, and soul, was crucial for recovery.
I wanted to create a grounded wellness event that champions holistic well-being and focuses on community, collective care, and genuine well-being. The world doesn’t need another consumerized wellness event.
How can brands and practitioners better align with this new wellness vision?
Natasha: The shift is happening organically. We know, innately, what makes us feel good. Being on social media or buying new yoga leggings isn’t the answer. With the world being so unstable right now, politically, wars, climate crisis, and so on, it is up to us, the wellness community, to provide real answers and support. Performative wellness doesn’t cut it.
What theme does the summit aim to embody?
Natasha: Moving beyond ‘me’ and toward ‘we’ regarding wellness. Because we can’t be well in a world that is sick.
What role do multi-sensory and experiential formats play in engaging with wellness in 2025?
Natasha: How we experience wellness, from environment to modality, significantly impacts our feelings. Our approach to holistic wellness (not looking at the body and mind as separate but as a whole) feeds into our senses, too.
The wellness space is witnessing a surge in interest in ancestral knowledge and heritage beauty rituals. Why is this shift happening now?
Natasha: We’re living in an age of disconnection and hyper-individualism, which is leading to loneliness, collective trauma, and a lack of purpose.
Many of the things we need to be well aren’t complex — they’re human. Ancestral wisdom brings ritual and togetherness to experiences many of us in Western societies now experience alone.
We crave reconnecting with our humanity, each other, and the world around us. Our overall well-being needs to do so.
The event will offer attendees immersive panel talks with industry experts and creative workshops.
How do you see the wellness industry evolving over the next five years?
Natasha: I think we’re going to see the link between wellness and politics, the systems and policies that are making us unwell, become mainstream conversation. Wellness can’t continue as simply a trend — many of us in holistic well-being talk of getting to root causes rather than treating symptoms. The ultimate root cause is the world around us.
What do you believe it means to be “well” in 2025?
Natasha: To be in and serve your community, to be connected to nature, to have purpose and a belief system to anchor you, and to eat, breathe, and move well.
