Pause. Breathe. Bloom. Repeat.
Local artist Maddy Mengel didn't set out to create a wellness event. She set out to create the kind of immersive experience this city was missing. Bloom Within is back for 2026 - and it's exactly as impressive as it looks.
Written by Sam Kirby
Photography provided.
I am reluctant to admit I'm not so great at slowing down. Some might even say I run at an 'enthusiastic' pace.
Partly, it's because I tend to say 'yes' with the same wild abandon that The Rock (Dwayne Johnson) or Nicholas Cage say yes to any and every movie role.
And despite the semi-weekly conversations I tend to have about the value of 'slow-living'; and despite my deeply romanticised desire to move 'just outside of town', plant a rambling vegetable garden and pickle something - I have never been particularly good at it [slowing down].
Life tends to fill up so incredibly fast. . .
Between the to-do lists, the group chats, the constant low hum of seventeen things I forgot to do, and the general chaos of simply existing, it's easy to arrive at the end of a week wondering where it went.
It's why, when something comes along that gives you genuine, guilt-free permission to take a moment - or in this case, two and a half hours - it does feel both wildly radical and exactly the kind of luxury we could all do with right now.
Cue the excitement when we heard that Bloom Within was returning for 2026.
Created by Toowoomba artist and designer Maddy Mengel, it's a 2.5-hour immersive art experience at Elevation Studios in Highfields - and there is genuinely nothing else like it. The session moves through slow, beginner-friendly pilates into soundbath meditation, held inside a studio wrapped in animated floral projections Maddy painted by hand. Four original artworks, brought to life across the walls around you, blooming and shifting as the experience unfolds.
Everyone's trying pilates these days (and if you haven't, you definitely should, the health benefits are well documented) - but not everyone's trying it like this. And we've all seen the videos of people looking blissfully horizontal under singing bowls and thought surely not - and then the sound starts, and you get it.
"Bloom Within grew into the kind of experience I wished had existed in Toowoomba," Maddy says. "One that gave people permission to pause, reconnect and feel something."
No experience needed. No gear required. And you leave with a goodie bag valued at $115 - packed with treats from Danny Patisserie, Relish Highfields and a swathe of local makers. A pretty good trade for a Sunday morning.
Bloom Within runs on the 20 and 27 September at elevationstudios.com.au
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