The world is currently on the cusp of a creative renaissance
fueled by technology and human ingenuity. Increasingly, we see new
opportunities for personal expression driven by urban planning: spaces
for citizen action, the arts, and entrepreneurship. Tech culture has
blended with grassroots art culture to form new possibilities. At the
heart of this atomic collision is an unlikely force: celebration.
Black Rock City, Nevada, the site of the annual weeklong Burning Man
event, sets the context for our community’s radical form of creativity.
The notion of celebration attracts a wildly disparate audience and
offers space for more than 55,000 participants to experiment. The
fundamental design of the temporary city encourages innovation and
large-scale collaboration. As such, the city has proven to be an
incubator for radical ideas with broader applications in the world. For
instance, a closed text messaging network developed by Burning Man
participants for use on the playa could be used in disaster areas when
traditional cell towers malfunction.
Today, Burning Man is a culture guided by our Ten Principles, crafted as
a reflection of the community’s ethos as it organically developed.
Those principles—Radical Inclusion, Gifting, Decommodification, Radical
Self-Reliance, Radical Self-Expression, Communal Effort, Civic
Responsibility, Participation, Immediacy, and Leaving No Trace—were
forged in the furnace of celebration but extend well beyond. “Burners”
are applying these values back to their lives and workplaces—and toward
creative capacity development around the world.
In 2005, I watched burners who had spent months preparing for the
event leave Black Rock City to travel to Pearlington, Mississippi, to
help organize relief efforts after Hurricane Katrina hit. I was floored.
In Pearlington, a town otherwise mostly forgotten, they didn’t just
pitch in to help clear the mess; they established an outpost that
radiated the Burning Man culture through programs and activities that
bolstered the community. For me, seeing how much was possible in
translating the culture off the playa helped set in motion what would
become The Burning Man Project.
Reflecting
on his experience, participant Will Chase wrote: “Using Camp Katrina as a
model, this concept can be reproduced anywhere in the world by other
crews. Burners out there are able to survive in harsh conditions,
creatively problem-solve with substandard working materials, apply civic
principles within a community, and have a great time doing it.”
Last fall, a crew of burners set up a pop-up space in West Oakland
that thrived for eight weeks. A vacant lot in a distressed neighborhood
was completely transformed into a carnival-themed creative community
space on the weekends. The space featured art installations, creative
workshops, local performing arts programming, artisan micro-retail
outlets, and food trucks. As reported by John Curley for the San Francisco Chronicle, “You can see for yourself that art can be a force for urban renewal.”
Now we’re working with kids from challenged areas to explore their
environment and build their craft together. The Youth Education
Spaceship project is a collaboration among a range of civic, arts,
technology, environmental, and educational organizations. Children from
ages seven to 15 are learning skills in metalwork, mosaic, glass fusion
and blowing, photography, and robotics, as well as information
surrounding ancient civilizations, space travel, and astronomy. They’ll
use these skills and found objects to craft a spaceship to be displayed
throughout San Francisco and ultimately at Burning Man.
The Burning Man culture helps people see themselves and their
communities differently and, through art and self-expression, come
together and manifest transformative experiences. The Burning Man
Project is committed to catalyzing positive change and nurturing the
growth of the global creative community—but we can’t do it alone. We
encourage you to join us in facilitating and celebrating the amazing
things that happen when creative people work together.
This article originally appeared in Makeshift,
a quarterly magazine about creativity and invention in informal
economies around the world.
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