Sustaining the independent art festival: social capital and mutual interest in Festival Lima Gunung

The relationship between art and society is often commodified as an instrument for the exploitation of non-artistic communities in artistic work. In practice, this is often considered to be merely diversification, in the sense that the idea of collaboration needs to be further reviewed in order to avoid tokenization. This study emphasizes artistic practices and work that grow out of society by looking at how they operate in terms of social capital. Festival Lima Gunung is an annual art festival initiated by Komunitas Lima Gunung, which has successfully demonstrated resilience by running continuously for 24 years since 2002. This festival manifests artistic performances produced through collaborative community work in presenting performance-based and theatrical art. Collaborative practices between communities will be contextualized through the concept of social capital proposed by Robert D. Putnam, through three elements, namely: 1) social trust, 2) networks of civic engagement, and 3) reciprocal norms. This research analyzes how these three elements become the core strategy for the sustainability of an art festival that runs independently without dependence on corporate sponsors or government funds. The hypothesis so far shows that in the Lima Gunung Festival, trust minimizes managerial bureaucratic barriers, engagement networks expand the distribution of resources across villages, and reciprocal norms blur the hierarchical boundaries between audiences, committees, and artists, making them equal initiators. Thus, Festival Lima Gunung proves that cultural sustainability is not determined by the amount of financial capital, but rather by how strongly social capital is converted into community power. This demonstrates the community's collaborative practices in art, while challenging art and community practices that often trap citizen participation at the level of tokenism. The findings offer a model of socially engaged art that acts as an organic and sustainable social glue.